JUL  30  1921 


BX  9841  .R35  1920 
Reccord,  Augustus  P.  1870 
Who  are  the  Unitarians'' 


WHO  ARE  THE  UNITARIANS? 


v>'" 


JUL  30195 

WHO  ARE  W,, 
THE   UNITARIANS 


BY 


AUGUSTUS  P.  RECCORD 


Eight  sermons  delivered  at  the  request  of  and 
published  by  the  Board  of  Trustees  of  the 
First  Unitarian  Church  of  Detroit,  Michigan. 


THE  BEACON  PRESS 

25  Beacon  Street 
BOSTON,    -     -     -     MASS. 


Copyright,  1920 
By  the  beacon  PRESS 


All  rights  reserved 


PREFACE 

The  exclusion  from  the  Interchurch 
World  Movement  of  the  Unitarian  churches, 
in  common  with  the  Universalist,  has 
prompted  the  question,  "Who  are  these 
Unitarians?  What  is  their  origin  and  his- 
tory and  belief  that  they  should  not  be  per- 
mitted to  participate  in  one  of  the  most 
ambitious  religious  movements  of  today?" 
The  admission  that  the  exclusion  was  based 
upon  policy  rather  than  upon  principle,  upon 
expediency  rather  than  upon  conviction,  has 
not  lessened  the  popular  interest  in  the  above 
questions.  The  sermons  included  in  this 
little  volume  are  an  attempt  to  give  a  partial 
answer.  They  were  delivered  at  the  request 
of  the  Board  of  Trustees  of  the  First  Uni- 
tarian Church  of  Detroit,  Michigan,  and  are 
published  by  that  same  board,  with  the  hope 
and  expectation  that  they  will  be  welcomed 
by  thoughtful,  broadminded  people  in  all 
denominations.     While  it  is  impossible  for 


PREFACE 

any  one  person,  whether  minister  or  layman, 
to  commit  the  entire  Unitarian  fellowship,  it 
is  believed  that  these  sermons  express,  with 
reasonable  accuracy,  the  consensus  of  opin- 
ion among  an  increasing  number  of  Uni- 
tarians. 

Augustus  P.  Reccord. 

Detroit,  Michigan, 
May,  1920. 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Introduction:     The  Unitarian  Movement    .  1 
What  Unitarians  Believe 

I     God 17 

II     Jesus 8S 

III     The  Holy  Spirit 53 

IV     The  Bible 69 

V     Prayer 83 

VI     Salvation 99 

VII     The  Future  Life 115 

Conclusion;     Are  Unitarians  Evangelical?  .  130 


Where  the  spirit  of  the  Lord  is, 
there  is  liberty. 

2  Corinthians  III,  17. 


WHO  ARE  THE  UNITARIANS? 

INTRODUCTION 
THE  UNITARIAN  MOVEMENT 

AS  an  organized  movement  Unitarianism 
is  of  recent  origin.  As  an  attitude  of 
mind  toward  the  things  of  the  spirit  it  is  as 
old  as  Christianity  itself.  It  commends  it- 
self to  the  thoughtful,  not  as  a  body  of  doc- 
trine, but  as  a  method  of  apprehending  re- 
ligious truth,  the  method  of  free  and  unfet- 
tered observation  and  reflection.  Over  the 
door  of  every  Unitarian  church  might  be  in- 
scribed the  words  of  Isaiah,  *'This  is  the  way, 
walk  ye  in  it." 

It  is  sometimes  claimed  that  the  church  of 
the  first  two  or  three  centuries  was  Unitar- 
ian. It  was  Unitarian  only  in  the  sense 
that  it  was  not  Trinitarian,  The  doctrine  of 
the  Trinity  had  not  yet  been  formulated. 
Many  of  the  teachings  of  the  church  were  as 

[1] 


WHO  ARE  THE  UNITARIANS? 

far  removed  from  our  conceptions  of  reli- 
gious truth  as  from  the  strictest  orthodoxy. 
The  chief  thing  that  we  have  in  common 
with  it  is  the  right  of  private  judgment  in 
matters  of  belief  or  conduct.  Gradually 
this  right  was  wrested  from  the  people  by  the 
steady  encroachment  of  the  growing  Cath- 
olic church  until  not  a  vestige  of  it  remained. 
For  the  devout  believer,  the  decrees  of  the 
church  usurped  the  place  of  both  reason  and 
conscience.  The  reformers  of  the  sixteenth 
century  threw  off  one  yoke  only  to  assume 
another.  They  emancipated  themselves 
from  bondage  to  the  church  but  substituted 
for  it  an  equally  oppressive  bondage  to  the 
letter  of  the  Bible.  Unitarians,  through- 
out their  history,  have  refused  to  recognize 
these  or  any  other  purely  external  authori- 
ties in  morals  or  religion.  They  have  asked, 
with  Jesus,  "Why,  even  of  yourselves,  judge 
ye  not  what  is  right?"  And  so  whoever, 
throughout  the  ages,  has  dared  to  raise  his 
voice  in  protest  against  the  authority  of  a 
divinely  instituted  church  or  a  divinely  in- 
spired book  and  in  the  interest  of  the  di- 
[2] 


INTRODUCTION 

vinely  given  reason  and  conscience,  may  be 
regarded  as  the  spiritual  forerunner  of  the 
Unitarian  movement. 

It  was  not  until  a  century  ago  that  this 
movement  took  definite  form  here  in  Amer- 
ica. At  the  beginning  of  the  century  which 
brought  the  Pilgrim  Fathers  to  Plymouth, 
English  Unitarianism  was  confined  to  cer- 
tain individual  thinkers  who  were  hated  and 
persecuted  by  Catholic  and  Protestant  alike. 
One  could  hardly  expect  to  find  many  traces 
of  Unitarian  thought  among  the  founders  of 
New  England  and  yet,  in  spite  of  their  rigid 
Calvinism,  they  brought  with  them  the 
germs,  at  least,  of  a  larger  and  more  humane 
theology.  They  craved  simplicity,  and  this 
led  them  to  omit  all  creed  tests  from  their 
church  covenants.  They  loved  liberty,  reli- 
gious as  well  as  political,  and  while  they 
acknowledged  their  dependence  upon  the 
Bible,  they  insisted  upon  their  right  to  use 
their  reason  in  its  interpretation.  It  has 
been  well  said  that  "In  the  broad  and  pro- 
phetic spirit  of  John  Robinson,  in  the  in- 
tense love  of  liberty  of  Sir  Harry  Vane,  in 
[3] 


WHO  ARE  THE  UNITARIANS? 

the  sturdy  sense  and  rational  judgments  of 
John  Winthrop,  ...  in  the  fidelity  to  toler- 
ation of  Roger  Williams  and  his  keen  insight 
into  the  meaning  of  soul  liberty,  what  is  now 
called  Unitarianism  had  its  beginnings." 

Two  events  hastened  the  birth  of  Ameri- 
can Unitarianism  as  an  organized  movement. 
One  was  the  adoption  of  the  half-way  cove- 
nant; the  other  was  the  Great  Awakening. 
Previous  to  1662  only  church  members  were 
allowed  to  vote  in  civil  affairs.  This  meant 
the  disfranchisement  of  five-sixths  of  the  peo- 
ple and  provoked  bitter  complaint.  The 
half-way  covenant  was  an  attempt  to  allay 
the  discontent  of  the  disfranchised.  It 
sought  to  counteract  the  growing  disinclina- 
tion to  become  members  of  the  church  by 
making  the  conditions  easier.  It  set  aside 
the  idea  of  a  converted  membership  and  ad- 
mitted all  who  had  been  baptized  in  infancy, 
were  of  good  moral  character  and  did  not 
openly  deny  the  teachings  of  the  church. 
Such  membership  conveyed  the  right  to  vote 
in  affairs  of  state  but  not  in  affairs  of  the 
church.  The  result  was  the  admission  of 
[4] 


INTRODUCTION 

many  who  had  not  experienced  conversion 
and  had  little  sympathy  with  the  doctrinal 
position  of  the  church.  The  presence  of 
these  half-way  members  was  viewed  with  sus- 
picion. It  seemed  to  cast  discredit  upon  the 
essential  character  of  conversion.  In  1735 
Jonathan  Edwards,  then  minister  of  the 
Northampton  church,  inaugurated  a  revival. 
Later  his  efforts  were  reenforced  by  the 
arrival  of  the  English  evangelist,  Whitefield. 
The  churches  were  aroused  from  their 
lethargy,  the  half-way  covenant  was  abol- 
ished, and  a  converted  church  membership 
restored. 

The  Unitarians  of  today  are  the  spiritual 
descendants  of  those  who  refused  to  be 
"awakened."  At  first  they  were  not  known 
by  this  name.  They  constituted  the  liberal 
wing  of  the  Congregationalist  body.  The 
situation  was  not  unlike  that  in  the  Congre- 
gationalist church  today.  Had  the  same 
spirit  of  toleration  prevailed  then  that  pre- 
vails today  there  would  have  been  no  divi- 
sion. If  the  same  spirit  of  intolerance  pre- 
vailed today  there  would  be  another  break. 
[5] 


WHO  ARE  THE  UNITARIANS? 

Tolerance,  however,  was  not  characteristic  of 
that  day.  The  conservative  ministers  pre- 
cipitated the  crisis  by  refusing  to  exchange 
pulpits  with  their  more  liberal  brethren.  In 
1805  they  were  filled  with  consternation  by 
the  appointment  of  Henry  Ware,  a  man  of 
Unitarian  convictions,  to  the  HoUis  profes- 
sorship at  Harvard  College.  This  made  him 
the  moral  and  religious  instructor  of  the  stu- 
dent body  and  demonstrated  that  the  college 
was  in  the  hands  of  the  representatives  of 
the  new  faith.  Andover  Seminary  was 
founded  at  once  to  counteract  the  growing 
tendency  toward  liberalism.  One  hundred 
years  later,  almost  to  a  day,  this  Seminary 
was  moved  to  Cambridge  and  affiliated  with 
the  Harvard  Divinity  School  as  coordinate 
parts  of  the  University. 

At  first  the  liberal  leaders  met  this  out- 
break of  fanatical  opposition  with  silence. 
They  were  disinclined  to  controversy  and 
dreaded  a  division  in  the  Congregational 
body.  But  as  the  breach  between  the  two 
wings  became  wider  and  the  relations  be- 
tween them  more  strained  they  were  forced 
[6] 


INTRODUCTION 

to  the  conclusion  that  such  a  division  was 
inevitable.  Disfellowshipped  by  their  bro- 
ther ministers  and  denounced  from  the  more 
conservative  pulpits,  they  felt  constrained  to 
speak.  They  found  a  spokesman  in  Wil- 
liam Ellery  Channing,  then  minister  of  the 
Federal  Street  church  in  Boston.  In  1819 
he  was  invited  to  preach  the  sermon  at  the 
ordination  of  Jared  Sparks,  in  Baltimore. 
Taking  as  his  subject  ^'Unitarian  Christian- 
ity," he  contended  for  a  rational  interpreta- 
tion of  the  Bible  as  a  human  document, 
written  by  men  and  for  men,  and  subject  to 
the  ordinary  methods  of  interpretation.  He 
then  stated  the  views  to  which  such  an  inter- 
pretation must  inevitably  lead,  the  unity  and 
moral  perfection  of  God,  the  humanity  and 
spiritual  leadership  of  Jesus  and  the  dignity 
and  worth  of  human  nature.  Ultimately 
these  came  to  be  known  as  the  three  great 
affirmations  of  Channing  Unitarianism. 

The  die  was  cast.     Henceforth  there  could 

be  no  concealment  or  evasion.     Lines  were 

sharply  drawn  and  ministers  and  churches 

were    compelled    to    take    sides.     As    one 

[7] 


WHO  ARE  THE  UNITARIANS? 

church  after  another  issued  its  declaration  of 
faith,  it  was  found  that  more  than  one  hun- 
dred and  twenty-five  New  England  churches, 
among  them  the  oldest  and  strongest,  had 
declared  for  the  new  faith.  A  glance  at  the 
Unitarian  Year  Book  will  reveal  the  fact 
that  the  old  first  churches  of  Plymouth,  Bos- 
ton, Cambridge,  Dorchester,  Roxbury,  Con- 
cord, Lexington,  Salem  and  twenty-six  other 
Massachusetts  communities,  all  founded  in 
the  seventeenth  century,  are  now  Unitarian. 
The  Berry  Street  Conference  of  Ministers 
was  formed  in  1820,  and  the  Christian  Regis- 
ter founded  in  1821.  There  organization 
lingered.  The  adherents  of  the  new  faith 
shrank  from  the  thought  of  founding  another 
denomination.  They  preferred  to  think  of 
themselves  as  an  *'  unsectarian  sect,"  hesi- 
tated to  take  the  Unitarian  name,  and  re- 
garded themselves  as  the  representatives  of  a 
religious  movement  rather  than  a  religious 
body.  But  there  can  be  no  movement  un- 
less there  is  something  to  move.  Organiza- 
tion does  not  mean  necessarily  stagnation 
and  inertia.  And  so  in  1825  the  American 
[8] 


INTRODUCTION 

Unitarian  Association  was  formed  and  or- 
ganized Unitarianism  was  born. 

The  Association's  initial  task  was  one  of 
the  most  difficult  and  perplexing  that  any 
group  of  religionists  ever  faced.  It  was  that 
of  organizing  liberty  so  as  to  make  it  effec- 
tive. Otherwise  the  churches  of  the  new 
order  were  destined  to  remain  but  httle  more 
than  a  group  of  ''jostling  independencies." 
The  task  is  not  yet  complete.  For  conveni- 
ence we  can  divide  the  first  century  of  the 
denominational  history  into  three  periods. 
The  first  was  one  of  affirmation  and  denial, 
affirmation  of  the  new  faith  and  denial  of 
the  old.  It  was  dominated  by  William 
EUery  Chamiing.  Once  grant  his  three 
great  affirmations  and  then  demand  that  all 
theological  doctrines  and  religious  beliefs  be 
thrown  into  the  arena  and  judged  by  their 
conformity  to  these  great  principles,  and,  no 
matter  how  tenaciously  the  old  dogmas  cling 
to  their  places,  the  door  is  thrown  wide  open 
for  a  religion  purified  from  superstition  and 
undefiled  by  dogma.  It  was  Channing's 
mission  to  open  this  door. 
[9] 


WHO  ARE  THE  UNITARIANS? 

The  second  period  was  one  of  emancipa- 
tion. It  was  dominated  by  Theodore  Parker 
and  Ralph  Waldo  Emerson.  There  are  still 
those  who  pride  themselves  upon  being 
Channing  Unitarians,  who  believe  as  Chan- 
ning  did  a  century  ago,  not  as  he  would  be- 
lieve if  he  were  here  today.  The  same  type 
existed  then.  From  the  beginning  the  new 
faith  tended  to  become  stereotyped.  It  be- 
gan to  acquire  that  rigidity  of  form  against 
which  Channing  uttered  his  warning  and 
which  he  characterized  as  "Unitarian  Or- 
thodoxy." Parker  and  Emerson,  each  in  his 
own  way,  stripped  off  the  shell  which  was 
gradually  encasing  the  new  faith  and  de- 
stroyed the  last  vestige  of  the  old  super- 
naturalism.  They  freed  religion  from  its 
accidental  character  and  grounded  it  in  the 
moral  and  spiritual  nature  of  man.  Emer- 
son sounded  the  key  note  of  the  impending 
change  in  his  Divinity  School  Address,  de- 
livered in  1838.  Three  years  later  Parker's 
''Transient  and  Permanent  in  Christianity" 
heralded  the  coming  of  the  church  univer- 
sal: 

[10] 


INTRODUCTION 

"Whose  temple  shall  be  all  space; 
Whose  shrine  shall  be  the  heart; 
Whose  creed  shall  be  the  truth; 

Whose  ritual  shall  be  works  of  love  and  usefulness; 
Whose  profession  of  faith  shall  be  divine  life; 
Whose  constant  aspiration  shall  be  to  be  perfect  as 
God  is  perfect/* 

Today  we  are  glad  to  claim  these  men  as 
among  the  richest  fruits  of  the  liberal  faith, 
and  yet  we  find  a  striking  commentary  upon 
the  Unitarianism  of  that  day  in  Dr.  Everett's 
pathetic  statement  that  "of  the  two  men  who 
were  to  do  more  than  any  others  to  shape  its 
future  history,  one  turned  his  back  upon 
Unitarianism  and  upon  the  other  Unitarian- 
ism turned  its  back."  Today  both  of  these 
names  are  included  in  our  Unitarian  hall  of 
fame. 

The  third  period  has  been  one  of  recon- 
struction and  readjustment.  Its  watchword 
has  been  organization  for  efficiency.  It  has 
been  dominated  by  no  one  or  two  men.  It 
has  been  the  result  of  a  common  spirit  and 
purpose  gradually  taking  possession  of  the 
whole  bodv.     Channing  and  his  successors 

[11] 


WHO  ARE  THE  UNITARIANS? 

fought  the  battle  of  intellectual  freedom. 
Emerson  and  Parker  compelled  a  recogni- 
tion of  the  supreme  authority  of  truth. 
Their  successors  realized,  as  one  of  their 
number  expressed  it,  that  what  the  world 
really  needs  "  is  not  merely  truth  and  free- 
dom but  truth,  freedom  and  usefulness." 
And  so  it  has  been  upon  usefulness,  service- 
ableness,  devotion  to  the  common  weal,  that 
the  churches  of  this  latter  period  have  placed 
the  chief  emphasis.  The  immediate  result 
has  been  a  pronounced  impetus  toward 
church  extension.  Of  the  three  hundred  and 
forty-four  churches  founded  during  the  last 
century,  two  hundred  and  thirty-one  were 
organized  during  the  last  forty  years  of  it. 
These  are  all  free  churches,  made  up  of  "the 
Lord's  free  people."  In  common  with  all 
others  of  the  Unitarian  faith  they  recognize 
no  external  authority  in  belief  or  morals. 
Every  church  is  free  to  formulate  its  own 
belief  and  to  determine  its  own  practice  and 
it  grants  the  same  freedom  to  each  individual 
member.  And  yet,  through  their  efforts  for 
a  more  positive  and  constructive  faith,  a  more 
[12] 


INTRODUCTION 

effective  organization  and  a  larger  recogni- 
tion of  the  responsibilities  of  freedom,  there 
has  been  achieved,  by  these  free  churches  of 
America,  a  unity  of  belief  and  a  unanimity 
of  purpose  which  are  without  parallel  in  any 
of  the  churches  which  have  relied  upon  the 
constraint  of  theological  creeds  or  ecclesiasti- 
cal forms. 

Abraham  Lincoln,  when  asked  why  he  had 
never  joined  a  church,  replied:  "Because  I 
have  found  difficulty  in  giving  my  assent, 
without  mental  reservations,  to  the  long  and 
complicated  statements  of  Christian  doctrine 
which  characterize  their  articles  of  belief  and 
confessions  of  faith.  When  any  church  will 
inscribe  over  its  altars,  as  its  sole  qualification 
for  membership,  the  Saviour's  condensed 
statement  of  the  substance  of  both  law  and 
gospel,  *Thou  shalt  love  the  Lord  thy  God 
with  all  thy  heart  and  with  all  thy  soul  and 
with  all  thy  mind,  and  thy  neighbor  as  thy- 
self,' that  church  will  I  join  with  all  my  heart 
and  all  my  soul."  This  is  substantially  the 
position  of  our  Unitarian  churches  today. 
We  accept  the  religion  of  Jesus  a§  summed 
[13] 


WHO  ARE  THE  UNITARIANS? 

up  in  love  to  God  and  man,  and  welcome  to 
our  fellowship  all  who  are  in  sympathy  with 
our  purpose  and  practical  aims.  Never 
were  we  so  united  in  spirit  and  purpose; 
never  so  efficiently  organized  for  practical 
Christian  work;  never  so  assured  that  what- 
ever may  be  the  name  of  the  future  religion 
of  America,  it  will  be  essentially  Unitarian  in 
spirit  and  purpose.  The  only  church  for  a 
free  people  is  a  free  church.  The  only  reli- 
gion for  a  democratic  people  is  a  democratic 
religion. 


[14] 


Have  we  not  all  one  Father? 
Hath  not  one  God  created  us  ? 

Malachi  II,  10. 

To  us  there  is  one  God,  the  Father, 
of  whom  are  all  things  and  we  unto  Him. 

1  Corinthians  VIII,  6. 


GOD 

THE  problem  of  the  centuries  has  been 
how  to  secure  an  adequate  conception 
of  God.  Primitive  rehgion  was  based  upon 
the  assumption  of  a  localized  deity.  Pres- 
ent day  religion  depends  for  its  very  life 
upon  the  thought  of  God  as  everywhere  pres- 
ent and  everywhere  operative  in  the  world 
that  he  has  made.  These  two  conceptions 
differ  by  almost  the  whole  diameter  of  being. 
The  transition  from  one  to  the  other  has  been 
made  with  great  difficulty  and  to  many  it  has 
seemed  to  involve  the  complete  overthrow  of 
the  foundations  upon  which  all  religion  rests. 
The  poets  are  often  our  best  theologians. 
They  apprehend  through  intuition  what 
others  attain  only  through  the  slower  pro- 
cess of  reasoning.  The  Epilogue  to  Brown- 
ing's "Dramatis  Personae"  contains  more 
and  better  theology  than  many  a  theological 
treatise.  It  reports  a  supposed  discussion 
between  King  David  and  Renan,  with  the 
[17] 


WHO  ARE  THE  UNITARIANS? 

poet  standing  by  as  arbiter  and  judge  and 
rendering  the  final  verdict.  David  speaks 
for  Hebrew  supernaturalism.  He  pictures 
the  pomp  and  splendor  of  the  ancient  temple 
worship,  with  its  stately  ritual  and  elaborate 
ceremonial.  The  discussion  takes  place  at 
the  time  of  the  feast  of  dedication.  The 
robed  priests  and  the  Levites  give  the  signal 
for  the  hosts  of  Israel  to  assemble.  Moved 
by  the  sound  of  the  music  and  the  spectacle 
of  the  smoke  and  the  flame  of  the  sacrificial 
fires,  the  people  bow  before  the  visible  pres- 
ence of  Jehovah. 

"Then  the  temple  filled  with  a  cloud, 

Even  the  house  of  the  Lord; 
Porch  bent  and  pillar  bowed; 

For  the  presence  of  the  Lord, 
In  the  glory  of  the  cloud, 

Had  filled  the  house  of  the  Lord." 

To  Renan,  the  skeptic,  all  this  savored  of 
the  superstition  of  a  past  age.  He  had 
drunk  deep  of  the  springs  of  scientific  know- 
ledge and,  for  him,  the  last  spark  of  the  an- 
cient faith  had  been  extinguished.  The  face 
which  seemed,  to  others,  to  materialize  amid 
[18] 


GOD 

the  smoke  of  the  altar  and  was  so  real  that 
it  called  forth  the  worship  of  an  adoring  mul- 
titude, had  been  swallowed  up  in  darkness. 
The  star,  which  once  shone  so  brightly,  had 
"lost  itself  in  the  multitude  of  lesser  lights." 
He  tried  to  pierce  the  heavens,  but  in  vain. 
He  longed  for  the  return  of  the  ancient  s}an- 
bols,  but  to  no  avail.  The  mood  of  faith  had 
departed  and  he  was  left  alone  with  his  skep- 
ticism and  despair.  Nowhere  can  we  find 
a  truer  expression  of  the  sense  of  loss  which 
attends  the  dissipation  of  one's  childhood 
faith  under  the  withering  touch  of  science 
than  in  Renan's  last  lines. 

*'0h,  dread  succession  to  a  dizzy  post, 
Sad  sway  of  sceptre  whose  mere  touch  appals, 
Ghastly  dethronement,  cursed  by  those  the  most 
On  whose  repugnant  brow  the  crown  next  falls." 

Such  is  the  inevitable  result  when  God  is 
banished  from  his  universe  and  man  becomes 
monarch  of  all  he  surveys. 

Then  speaks  the  poet.     To  a  world  thus 
mentally  and  spiritually  distraught  he  de- 
livers his  message.     David  and  Renan,  piet- 
[19] 


WHO  ARE  THE  UNITARIANS? 

ist  and  skeptic,  both  have  erred, — one  in  the 
materializing  of  faith,  the  other  in  the  aban- 
donment of  faith.  God  will  not  reveal  him- 
self in  response  to  the  pomp  and  splendor 
of  ritual  worship.  Neither  will  he  abdicate 
his  throne  at  the  behest  of  science.  The 
world  throbs  and  pulsates  with  his  life  and 
is  informed  by  his  spirit.  The  face,  which 
once  looked  out  from  the  smoke  and  the 
flame,  now  tabernacles  within  each  human 
heart.  The  star,  which  once  illumined  the 
heavens,  now  shines  in  the  firmament  of  each 
human  soul.  One  whose  universe  is  thus 
filled  with  God  has  no  need  of  a  temple 
made  with  hands.  One  who  is  conscious  of 
the  presence  of  God  in  his  own  soul  does 
not  need  to  scan  the  heavens  for  miracle  or 
sign.     As  Browning  says: 

"Why,  where's  the  need  of  a  Temple,  when  the  walls 

O'  the  world  are  that?     What  use  of  swells  and  falls, 

From  Levites'  choir,  Priests*  cries  and  trumpet  calls? 

That  one  face,  far  from  vanish,  rather  grows, 

Or  decomposes  but  to  recompose, 

Becomes  my  universe  that  feels  and  knows." 

We  shall  look  far  for  a  finer  expression  of 
[20] 


GOD 

religious  faith.  A  universe  that  feels  and 
knows,  that  is  conscious  and  intelligent,  is 
itself  God  and  every  constituent  part  of  it  is 
an  expression  of  the  life  of  God.  The  poet's 
verdict  is  confirmed  by  the  reasoned  judg- 
ment of  mankind. 

The  first  question  which  one  is  prompted 
to  ask  concerning  this  God  who  is  at  once 
immanent  and  transcendent  is,  "Is  he  real? 
Or  is  he  the  invention  of  priestcraft  and  su- 
perstition?" This  question  never  presented 
itself  to  our  fathers,  with  their  tiny  universe 
and  their  tinier  God.  He  was  simply  a 
magnified  type  of  the  world  emperor,  and 
his  sway  was  as  arbitrary  and  irresponsible 
as  that  of  any  earthly  ruler.  As  long  as 
this  conception  survived,  it  made  possible  all 
sorts  of  schemes  for  mediation  and  interces- 
sion. It  fixed  a  great  gulf  between  God  and 
man.  He  could  be  approached  only  at 
stated  seasons,  through  prescribed  function- 
aries and  after  suitable  propitiation.  All 
the  conventional  machinery  of  medieval 
court  circles  was  duplicated  in  the  traditional 
theology.  It  was  a  great  day  for  priest- 
[21] 


WHO  ARE  THE  UNITARIANS? 

craft  and  ecclesiasticism ;  but  a  sad  day  for 
pure  and  undefiled  religion. 

Such  a  conception  could  endure  only  as 
long  as  the  circle  of  ideas  which  gave  it  birth. 
We  live  in  a  world  which  is  immeasurably 
larger  than  that  which  was  known  to  our 
fathers.  Its  dimensions  have  been  pushed 
out  through  all  space  and  yet  we  know  that 
beyond  the  remotest  star  which  the  telescope 
has  revealed  there  are  worlds  without  num- 
ber. Its  history  has  been  pushed  back 
through  all  time  and  yet  we  know  that  at 
the  earliest  authentic  date  which  the  historian 
can  discover  the  world  was  hundreds  of 
millenniums  old  and  human  society  in  com- 
paratively an  advanced  state  of  development. 
Can  we  wonder  that  men  have  been  so  over- 
whelmed by  this  sudden  enlargement  of  the 
universe  that  their  faith  in  God  has  been 
shaken  and  sometimes  completely  destroyed? 
In  a  real  universe,  reaching  back  through 
infinite  time  and  out  through  infinite  space, 
what  becomes  of  God?  Can  we  think  of 
him  as  real,  as  actually  existing,  and  espe- 
cially as  interested  in  the  activities  and 
[22] 


GOD 

watching  over  the  welfare  of  the  inhabitants 
of  what,  at  best,  is  but  a  second  rate  planet 
in  one  of  the  smaller  solar  systems? 

Such  questions  are  not  academic;  they  are 
real.  And  yet  they  are  not  flattering  to  the 
human  intellect.  Why  should  the  larger 
universe  demand  a  smaller  God?  Or  why 
should  it  be  able  to  subsist  with  no  God? 
Science  has  not  accounted  for  the  world 
when  it  has  succeeded  in  explaining  its  laws. 
A  law  accounts  for  nothing.  It  simply  des- 
cribes a  mode  of  operation.  Back  of  all  the 
affirmations  of  science  we  find  the  same  ques- 
tions which  baffled  our  fathers.  Who  first 
established  the  world?  Who  ordained  its 
laws?  Who  assigned  its  destiny?  To  such 
questions  there  is  but  one  answer,  and  that  is, 
"God."  We  may  call  him  by  different 
names  or  by  no  name  at  all,  but  in  the  last 
analysis  we  are  obliged  to  seek  an  explana- 
tion of  the  universe  in  the  existence  of  some 
supreme  and  sovereign  power.  Instead  of 
dispensing  with  God,  we  have  simply  taken 
him  from  his  tiny  throne  in  the  heavens  and 
allowed  him  to  enthrone  himself  in  the  uni- 
[23] 


WHO  ARE  THE  UNITARIANS? 

verse.  Without  him  the  world  is  unintelli- 
gible. It  cannot  be  explained  as  a  chance 
collocation  of  atoms  or  as  a  haphazard  con- 
catenation of  blind  forces.  Its  progress  can 
be  understood  only  in  the  light  of  an  intelli- 
gent and  controlling  purpose.  But  intelli- 
gence and  purpose  are  attributes  of  conscious 
personality,  not  of  material  atoms  and  physi- 
cal forces.  The  highest  affirmation  of  mod- 
ern science  is  the  fundamental  assumption  of 
all  religion,— the  affirmation  of  the  universe 
as  the  expression  of  the  ceaseless  activity  of 
an  intelhgent  and  purposeful  Being,  To 
the  eye  that  sees,  as  to  Mrs.  Browning, 

"Earth's  crammed  with  heaven 

And  every  common  bush  aflame  with  God." 

Can  we  think  of  this  God  as  personal? 
Our  answer  will  depend  upon  what  we  un- 
derstand by  personality.  To  many  it  sug- 
gests finiteness.  H.  G.  Wells  pictures  his 
Invisible  King  as  having  a  definite  beginning 
in  time,  struggling  ever  toward  perfection 
and  summoning  us  to  assist  him  in  the  strug- 
gle. Otherwise,  writes  Mr.  Wells,  he  could 
[24] 


GOD 

not  be  a  person,  for  *'to  be  a  person  is  to  have 
characteristics  and  to  be  limited  by  charac- 
teristics." Such  a  conception  springs  from 
the  fact  that  we  know  personality  only  in  its 
finite,  human  form.  It  exists  unlimited  and 
complete  only  in  God.  Instead  of  being 
finite,  he  is  the  only  being  who  is  infinite. 
Instead  of  being  limited,  he  is  the  only  being 
who  transcends  all  limitations.  It  is  just 
this  absence  of  finitude  and  limitation  that 
makes  him  God.  We  could  not  long  stand 
in  awe  of  one  who  is  only  a  little  more  power- 
ful than  ourselves.  Nor  bow  in  reverence 
before  one  who  is  only  a  little  wiser  and 
better.  Personality  implies  thought,  feel- 
ing, will,  and  these  are  known  to  us  only  as 
they  are  embodied  in  human  form.  Raise 
these  to  infinite  power  and  we  have  an  infi- 
nite personality.  We  have  God.  The 
heart  and  soul  of  all  religion  is  the  conscious- 
ness that  we  live  'under  his  eye  and  by  his 
power."  We  can  still  "smile"  when  we 
think  that  "His  Greatness  flows  around  our 
incompleteness,  round  our  restlessness  His 
Rest." 

[25] 


WHO  ARE  THE  UNITARIANS? 

But  can  we  claim  such  a  God  as  our 
Father?  In  the  thought  of  his  magnitude, 
do  not  all  fatherly  quahties  disappear? 
Can  we  think  of  an  infinite  Father  consent- 
ing to  the  late  war  with  all  its  horrors?  Or 
standing  complacent  in  the  midst  of  our 
present  industrial  strife?  Such  questions 
betray  a  mistaken  conception  of  infinitude. 
Even  an  infinite  being  cannot  create  a  uni- 
verse of  law  and  order  and  then  set  at  naught 
the  laws  which  he  has  ordained.  He  cannot 
endow  men  with  free  wills  as  evidence  of 
moral  capacity  and  then  stand  between  them 
and  the  consequences  of  their  misdeeds. 
Even  an  earthly  father  sometimes  chastises 
his  children  and  the  Heavenly  Father  is  not 
freed  from  this  necessity.  "Whom  the  Lord 
loveth,  he  chasteneth."  Wliether  or  not 
God  is  our  father  depends,  not  upon  the 
magnitude  of  his  world,  but  upon  the  rela- 
tionship which  he  sustains  to  his  children. 
The  essence  of  fatherhood  is  community  of 
nature.  This  community  of  nature  has  not 
been  disturbed  by  our  enlarging  conception 
of  the  world  in  which  we  live.  The  life  that 
[26] 


GOD 

thrills  our  being  is  still  his  life.  The  love 
that  gives  meaning  and  worth  to  life  is  still 
the  reflection  of  his  love.  The  will  that  gives 
to  love  its  effectiveness  is  still  an  expression 
of  his  power.  The  conscience  which  gives 
to  the  will  its  direction  and  aim  is  still  the 
shadow  of  his  goodness.  These  are  all  dif- 
ferent phases  of  the  life  of  God  in  the  souls 
of  men.  Who  but  a  father  imparts  his  life 
to  his  children,  shields  them  with  his  love, 
prompts  them  to  do  the  right  and  rebukes 
them  when  wrong?  The  Fatherhood  of 
God,  instead  of  being  lost  in  this  larger  uni- 
verse, is  revealed  for  the  first  time  in  all  its 
fullness.  All  human  experience  points  to 
the  presence  of  a  living,  loving,  benevolent 
and  beneficent  personality  who  holds  the 
worlds  in  his  embrace  and  is  not  far  from 
any  one  of  us.  He  is  our  Father  in  Heaven 
and  our  ever  present  friend  and  helper  upon 
the  earth. 

Why  has  this  conception  been  so  slow  in 

winning    the    acceptance    of    the    religious 

world?     Why  is  it  that  even  now  it  is  so 

often  called  into  question  ?     Largely  because 

[27] 


WHO  ARE  THE  UNITARIANS? 

of  the  traditional  attitude  of  the  church. 
Instead  of  faith  in  God  it  has  emphasized 
certain  beliefs  about  God.  It  is  no  longer 
necessary  to  discuss  the  attempt  of  our 
Trinitarian  friends  to  confine  God  within 
the  limits  of  a  mathematical  formula.  To- 
day this  formula  is  either  repudiated  or  ex- 
plained away  by  the  descendants  of  those 
who  first  framed  it.  The  effectual  argu- 
ment against  Calvinism  is  not  mathematical 
but  moral.  Its  real  offense  was  not  that  it 
promulgated  certain  conceptions  of  God 
which  affronted  the  intellect,  but  that  it  as- 
cribed to  God  certain  attributes  which  af- 
fronted the  moral  sense  so  that  good  men  re- 
volted from  them  in  horror.  We  have  a 
right  to  demand  that  God  shall  be  as  good 
as  the  best  of  men,  and  yet  we  should  hesi- 
tate to  ascribe  to  the  worst  of  men  conduct 
which  the  old  theologj^  ascribed  to  God.  As 
one  of  our  liberal  thinkers  once  said  to  a 
Calvinistic  friend,  "Your  God  is  my  devil." 
He  was  not  a  father  but  a  fiend.  Worship 
implies  worth.  Where  there  is  no  worth, 
worship  is  impossible. 

[28] 


GOD 

If  we  seek  the  highest  revelation  of  God, 
we  must  look  for  it  in  the  highest  product 
of  creative  evolution,  man  himself.  To  re- 
ceive the  hest  revelation,  we  must  sit  at  the 
feet  of  the  best  of  men.  This  is  what  makes 
Jesus  the  supreme  revealer  of  God.  Others 
had  thought  of  God  as  their  father,  but  with 
them  the  relationship  was  purely  physical. 
God  was  a  sort  of  prehistoric  ancestor,  a 
mythical  parent,  from  whom  the  tribe  or 
clan  traced  its  descent.  With  Jesus  the  re- 
lationship was  purely  spiritual.  Seizing 
upon  a  word  which  symbolizes  one  of  the 
most  familiar  of  human  relationships,  he 
made  it  the  expression  of  his  own  best 
thought  concerning  God  and  his  relation  to 
men.  With  him  God  was  not  the  All- 
mighty  King,  nor  the  All-righteous  Judge; 
he  was  the  All-loving  Father.  We  acknowl- 
edge our  debt  to  Jesus,  not  because  he  was 
the  first  to  invent  the  phrase  or  to  discover 
the  relationship,  but  because  he  was  the  first 
to  make  it  the  central  feature  of  his  religious 
teaching.  In  the  words  which  were  most 
often  upon  his  lips,  "Our  Father,"  we  have 
[29] 


WHO  ARE  THE  UNITARIANS? 

the  most  fundamental  fact  in  human  experi- 
ence expressed  in  the  simplest  and  most  in- 
telhgible  form.  Beyond  that  we  do  not  need 
to  go.  It  is  the  highest  conception  that  the 
human  intellect  can  reach  or  the  human  heart 
desire.  As  Unitarians  we  are  content  to  sit 
at  Jesus'  feet  and  learn  of  his  Father  and 
our  Father,  his  God  and  our  God. 


[30] 


What  think  ye  of  Christ? 

Matthew  XXII,  ^2. 

Born  of  the  seed  of  David  according  to  the  flesh  and 
declared  to  be  the  Son  of  God,  with  power,  according 
to  the  spirit  of  holiness. 

Romans  I,  S—J^. 


JESUS 

WHAT  think  ye  of  Christ?  This  is 
one  of  the  most  absorbing  questions 
of  Christian  history.  It  is  the  one  question 
which  remains  to  differentiate  evangeHcal 
from  non-evangehcal  Christianity.  Other 
questions  which  once  divided  men  have  been 
answered  satisfactorily  or  relegated  to  an 
oblivion  from  which  they  ought  never  to  be 
recalled.  This  remains  as  the  most  widely 
apphed  test  of  Christian  fellowship.  Mem- 
bership in  the  Young  Men's  and  Young 
Women's  Christian  Associations,  the  Fed- 
eral Council  of  the  Churches  of  Christ  in 
America  and  the  Interchurch  World  Move- 
ment is  conditioned  by  it.  Men  are  judged 
by  their  opinions  about  Jesus,  not  by  their 
success  or  failure  in  appropriating  to  them- 
selves the  spirit  of  Jesus.  It  is  this  that 
gives  peculiar  significance  to  the  Unitarian 
answer. 

Unitarians   believe,   with   St.   Paul,   that 
Jesus  was  born  of  the  seed  of  David  accord- 
[33] 


WHO  ARE  THE  UNITARIANS? 

ing  to  the  flesh  and  declared  to  be  the  Son  of 
God  according  to  the  spirit  of  hoHness.  In 
other  words,  he  was  born  a  purely  human 
child  and  revealed  his  divine  origin  by  the 
purity  of  his  life  and  the  nobility  of  his  char- 
acter. They  also  believe,  with  the  great 
apostle,  that  God  was  in  Christ  reconciling 
the  world  to  himself.  These  beliefs  however 
are  not  peculiar  to  Unitarians.  They  are 
accepted  by  all  Christian  people.  All  admit 
that  God  was  incarnate  in  Jesus.  They 
differ  only  as  to  the  nature  and  extent  of 
this  incarnation.  Is  it  an  accomplished  fact 
or  a  continuous  process  ?  Was  God  present 
in  Jesus  alone  or  is  he  present  in  all  human- 
ity? If  he  was  present  only  in  the  one  his- 
toric figure,  Jesus  of  Nazareth,  we  have  no 
right  to  call  him  "Father."  If  he  is  pres- 
ent in  humanity  at  large,  we  have  no  right 
to  call  him  anything  else.  Thus  the  whole 
question  of  our  fihal  relationship  to  God  and 
our  fraternal  relationship  to  one  another  de- 
pends upon  our  conception  of  the  incarna- 
tion. It  is  a  doctrine  fundamental  to  Chris- 
tianity. 

[34] 


JESUS 

Historically  this  doctrine  is  an  outgrowth 
of  human  experience.  The  early  Christians 
were  compelled  to  account  for  the  character 
and  personality  of  Jesus  and  for  his  wonder- 
ful influence  over  the  hearts  and  lives  of  men. 
True  children  of  their  age,  they  attributed 
them  to  the  fact  that  God  was  present  in 
him  in  a  manner  which  could  not  be  affirmed 
of  other  men  and  then  sought  to  account  for 
this  miraculous  presence.  One  group  of 
writers  found  the  explanation  in  the  peculiar 
circumstances  which  attended  his  birth. 
They  asserted  that  the  Holy  Spirit  usurped 
the  place  of  a  human  father,  and  conse- 
quently that  Jesus  was  miraculously  con- 
ceived and  miraculously  born.  Another 
group  of  writers  found  this  explanation 
puerile  and  unsatisfactory.  They  sought 
another  by  resort  to  philosophic  speculation. 
They  affirmed  that  Jesus  was  the  incarnate 
Logos,  or  Word,  which  had  become  flesh  and 
dwelt  among  men,  full  of  grace  and  truth. 
This  is  the  fundamental  distinction  between 
the  first  three  gospels  and  the  fourth.  The 
Christian  church  has  accepted  and  perpetu- 
[35] 


WHO  ARE  THE  UNITARIANS? 

ated  both  of  these  explanations,  notwith- 
standing the  fact  that  they  are  mutually  con- 
tradictory and  destructive.  If  Jesus  was  the 
child  of  Mary  through  the  agency  of  the 
Holy  Spirit,  he  was  not  the  incarnate  Logos. 
If  he  was  the  incarnate  Logos,  the  Holy 
Spirit  could  have  had  nothing  to  do  with  his 
coming  into  the  world. 

It  is  the  consciousness  of  this  discrepancy 
which  has  led  to  the  reopening  of  the  whole 
question.  A  study  of  the  New  Testament 
records  for  the  purpose  of  ascertaining  the 
facts  concerning  Jesus'  birth  has  made  con- 
fusion worse  confounded.  St.  Paul  and  two 
of  the  gospel  writers  maintain  an  absolute 
silence  concerning  it,  while  the  two  who  men- 
tion it,  Matthew  and  Luke,  are  in  hopeless 
disagreement.  Both  give  the  genealogy  of 
Jesus,  but  they  differ  in  the  number  of  gen- 
erations between  him  and  David  and  in  the 
names  of  those  through  whom  the  descent 
was  maintained.  Both  trace  that  descent 
through  Joseph,  which  would  be  absolutely 
meaningless  if  Jesus  were  not  his  son.  Both 
contain  an  annunciation,  but  in  one  it  is  to 
[36] 


JESUS 

Mary  and  in  the  other  to  Joseph.  Both  lo- 
cate the  birth  in  Bethlehem,  but  in  one  the 
parents  live  in  Nazareth  and  are  summoned 
to  Bethlehem  at  an  opportune  moment,  while 
in  the  other  they  live  in  Bethlehem,  but  flee 
to  Nazareth  in  order  to  escape  the  wrath  of 
Herod.  When  we  turn  from  these  birth 
stories  to  the  main  portions  of  the  gospels, 
we  find  nothing  in  the  words  of  Jesus  or 
Mary  or  any  of  the  disciples  to  indicate  that 
Jesus  had  ever  lived  in  Bethlehem,  or  that 
his  birth  had  been  different  from  that  of 
other  Hebrew  children  of  that  period. 

A  candid  examination  of  these  birth  stories 
proves  conclusively  that  the  writers  were 
indulging  their  fancy  and  not  recording 
facts.  They  were  trying  to  account  for  the 
impression  which  Jesus  made  upon  his 
fellows,  and  they  did  it  in  the  only  way  in 
which  the  men  of  that  day  could  account  for 
a  personality  which  seemed  to  transcend  the 
limits  of  humanity.  With  their  conception 
of  human  nature  as  essentially  depraved  and 
corrupt,  they  were  obliged  to  attribute  to 
him  superhuman  origin  and  supernatural 
[37] 


WHO  ARE  THE  UNITARIANS? 

power.  The  history  of  ancient  peoples  and 
of  primitive  rehgions  affords  many  a  paral- 
lel. In  Egypt,  Apis  was  said  to  have  been 
born  of  a  virgin  and  to  have  been  the  incarna- 
tion of  Osiris.  Chang  Tao  Ling,  in  China, 
Krishna  and  Buddha  in  India,  and  countless 
heroes  of  Greek  and  Roman  mythology  were 
similarly  honored.  With  our  better  under- 
standing of  the  dignity  and  worth  of  human 
nature,  we  are  no  longer  under  the  necessity 
of  resorting  to  such  crude  methods  of  ex- 
plaining the  exceptional  among  our  fellow- 
men.  We  no  longer  regard  the  birth  of 
Jesus  as  in  any  way  supernatural  or  miracu- 
lous. We  cannot  believe  that  we  add  to  its 
impressiveness  by  removing  it  from  the  cate- 
gory of  normal  human  births.  To  assume 
that  the  Saviour  of  the  world  must  enter  life 
by  some  other  channel  is  an  insult  to  human 
motherhood  which  could  have  been  perpe- 
trated only  in  an  age  which  cherished  a  low 
estimate  of  human  nature.  It  is  the  work  of 
those  who,  in  the  words  of  Sir  Edwin  Arnold, 

"Dimly  see  thy  godlike  self  and  take 
True  glory  from  thee  for  false  glory's  sake." 

[38] 


JESUS 

The  explanation  found  at  the  beginning 
of  the  Fourth  Gospel  fares  little  better  at 
the  hands  of  the  New  Testament  critics.  It 
is  possible  today  to  trace  it  directly  to  its 
varied  sources.  It  is  a  crude  mixture  of 
Hebrew  mysticism,  Greek  philosophy  and 
Alexandrian  metaphysics.  The  achieve- 
ment of  the  author  of  this  gospel  was  made 
possible  by  the  Hebrew  custom  of  personify- 
ing wisdom.  The  book  of  Proverbs  states 
that  Jehovah,  by  the  aid  of  wisdom,  founded 
the  earth;  also  that  wisdom  was  brought 
forth  before  the  world  was  made  and  was 
present  at  the  time  of  its  creation.  In  his 
letter  to  the  Corinthians,  Paul  speaks  of 
Jesus  as  the  wisdom  of  God.  There  was  a 
similar  tendency  to  personify  the  divine 
word.  Isaiah  puts  into  the  mouth  of  Je- 
hovah the  declaration,  "My  word  shall  not 
return  unto  me  void,  but  it  shall  accomplish 
that  which  I  please,  and  it  shall  prosper  in 
the  thing  whereto  I  sent  it." 

A  parallel  effort  to  personify  the  attri- 
butes of  deity  had  been  made  among  the 
Greeks.     Plato  conceived  of  the  universe  as 
[39] 


WHO  ARE  THE  UNITARIANS? 

a  living,  rational  being,  who  revealed  himself 
to  the  human  reason  through  a  series  of  ideas 
or  words.  This  conception  was  taken  up  by 
the  Stoics  and  made  one  of  the  great  agencies 
for  the  intellectual  and  moral  advancement 
of  the  Greco-Roman  world.  To  Philo,  the 
Alexandrian  Jew,  belongs  the  credit  for  fus- 
ing the  Stoic  philosophy  and  the  Hebrew 
metaphysic  into  a  theological  system  which 
would  not  be  repugnant  to  the  strict  mono- 
theism of  the  Jews.  He  identified  the  He- 
brew Wisdom  with  the  Greek  Logos  or 
Word,  and  affirmed  that  it  was  the  agent  of 
creation  and  the  instrument  of  revelation. 
"The  Word  was  with  God  and  it  was  God. 
Through  him  all  things  were  made  and  in 
him  all  things  consist." 

Although  Philo  personified  this  Word  of 
God,  he  never  conceived  of  it  as  incarnate  in 
an  historic  human  personality.  For  this  step 
we  are  indebted  to  the  unknown  author  of  the 
Fourth  Gospel.  He  was  the  first  to  identify 
the  Logos  with  the  historic  Jesus.  To  Paul 
and  the  earlier  gospel  writers,  Jesus  was  the 
Son  of  God.  To  Philo,  the  Logos  was  the 
[40] 


JESUS 

Son  of  God.  The  author  of  the  Fourth 
Gospel,  proceeding  upon  the  assumption 
that  things  that  are  equal  to  the  same  thing 
are  equal  to  each  other,  identified  Jesus  with 
the  Logos  and  ascribed  to  him  its  unique  at- 
tributes and  powers.  "In  the  beginning  was 
the  Word,  and  the  Word  was  with  God  and 
the  Word  was  God."  This  is  the  voice  of 
Philo,  the  Alexandrian  Jew.  "And  the 
Word  became  flesh  and  dwelt  among  men." 
This  is  the  contribution  of  the  gospel  writer. 
It  is  the  first  clear  expression  of  the  embodi- 
ment of  the  Logos  in  Jesus  and  constitutes 
the  scriptural  basis  of  the  doctrine  of  the 
incarnation.  The  eternal  Logos  or  Word 
had  become  incarnate  in  a  finite  human  be- 
ing. It  was  no  longer  a  philosophical  ab- 
straction; it  had  become  an  object  of  faith 
and  love. 

The  importance  of  the  service  rendered  by 
this  conception  cannot  be  overestimated. 
The  Greek  mind  thought  of  God  as  imma- 
nent in  his  universe.  The  Hebrew  mind 
thought  of  him  as  dwelling  apart  from  his 
universe.  It  was  constitutionallv  unfitted 
[41] 


WHO  ARE  THE  UNITARIANS? 

to  receive  the  conception  of  an  immanent 
God  except  as  it  was  mediated  through  an- 
other being.  Thus  far  the  doctrine  served 
a  beneficent  end.  It  preserved  the  doctrine 
of  a  divine  humanity  at  a  time  vi^hen  men 
could  conceive  of  it  in  no  other  terms.  At 
the  same  time,  by  removing  Jesus  from  the 
sphere  of  humanity  and  endowing  him  with 
superhuman  attributes,  it  made  it  impossi- 
ble for  him  to  be  conceived  of  as  humanity's 
ideal.  The  Jesus  of  the  Fourth  Gospel  is 
devoid  of  almost  every  human  attribute. 
The  story  of  his  life  is  robbed  of  almost  every 
human  characteristic.  There  is  no  baptism, 
no  temptation,  no  proclamation  of  the  com- 
ing kingdom,  no  agony  in  the  garden,  no  cry 
of  despair  on  the  cross.  All  these  are  incon- 
sistent with  the  dignity  of  the  incarnate 
Logos.  The  prolonged  discourses  which 
the  author  puts  into  the  mouth  of  Jesus 
make  it  certain  that  he  thought  of  him  as  es- 
sentially different  in  nature  from  other  men 
and  sustaining  different  relations  with  the 
Father.  The  ideal  which  he  exemplified  was 
impossible  of  either  imitation  or  realization 
[42] 


JESUS 

by  them.  And  so,  as  the  thought  of  the  di- 
vine immanence  came  to  be  more  widely  ac- 
cepted and  better  understood,  this  concep- 
tion went  the  way  of  its  predecessor.  It  lost 
its  power  of  appeal.  As  men  learn  to  ap- 
preciate the  essential  oneness  of  the  Hfe  of 
the  universe,  they  turn  from  the  mythical 
Christ  of  the  Fourth  Gospel,  to  the  Jesus  of 
the  other  three,  only  to  find  that  the  moral 
and  rehgious  value  of  his  life  is  not  lessened, 
but  enhanced,  by  the  recognition  of  its  purely 
human  character. 

But  what  of  the  incarnation?  Shall  it  be 
eliminated  from  the  scheme  of  Christian  doc- 
trine? Not  at  all.  The  experience  out  of 
which  it  grew  is  as  valid  as  ever.  The  im- 
pression which  Jesus'  life  and  character 
make  upon  Christian  men  and  women  has 
grown  stronger  with  each  succeeding  genera- 
tion. If  we  reject  the  traditional  explana- 
tion of  his  influence  over  the  hearts  and  lives 
of  men,  we  are  morally  bound  to  find  some 
explanation  of  it  which  shall  be  more  in  ac- 
cord with  the  facts.  The  modern  man  is 
compelled  to  translate  the  old  doctrine  into 
[43] 


WHO  ARE  THE  UNITARIANS? 

the  terms  of  the  new  theology  and  of  the  new 
science.  It  is  God  in  Christ  appealing  to  the 
God  in  us,  which  accounts  for  the  growing 
power  of  the  Christ  ideal.  The  defect  of  the 
older  conception  was  not  that  it  claimed  too 
much  for  Jesus,  but  that  it  claimed  too  little 
for  humanity.  What  it  affirmed  of  him,  we 
affirm  of  the  race.  Instead  of  putting  him 
in  a  class  by  himself,  too  remote  from  us  to 
be  spiritually  helpful,  we  welcome  him  as  the 
first  born  of  many  brethren.  And  the  dis- 
tinctive merit  of  this  larger  conception  is  that 
it  does  justice  to  all  concerned.  It  does  not 
degrade  God  by  assuming  that  he  could  em- 
body himself  in  a  single  historic  personality. 
It  does  not  degrade  Jesus  by  reducing  him 
to  the  level  of  a  "mere  man."  It  does  not 
degrade  humanity  by  assuming  that  it  is  sep- 
arated from  God  by  a  gulf  which  Christ 
alone  can  bridge.  The  grace  that  was  in 
Jesus  is  latent  in  us.  The  divine  love  and 
wisdom  revealed  through  him  are  constantly 
seeking  expression  through  us. 

Such  a  conception  may  seem  to  be  a  wide 
departure  from  the  traditional  doctrine,  but 
[44] 


JESUS 

it  is  the  only  conception  which  science  makes 
possible.  Belief  in  an  immanent  God  makes 
it  necessary  to  assume  that  the  life  of  God 
is  manifest  in  every  part  of  his  creation. 
The  form  and  magnitude  of  this  manifesta- 
tion is  conditioned  by  the  nature  and  capac- 
ity of  the  medium  through  which  it  is  re- 
vealed. In  stock  and  stone,  in  plant  and 
tree,  in  the  conscious  life  of  the  lower  ani- 
mals, we  behold  the  varying  manifestations 
of  the  life  of  God.  In  one  it  is  force,  in  an- 
other vital  energy,  in  another  consciousness, 
and  yet, 

"God  is  seen  God, 

In   the   star,  in   the   stone,   in   the   flesh,  ...  in  the 

clod." 

Let  us  assume  that,  throughout  the 
ages,  there  has  been  a  constant  increase  in 
this  capacity  to  receive  and  show  forth  the 
life  of  God,  until,  at  last,  there  appears  a 
creature  capable  of  standing  erect,  turning 
his  gaze  heavenward  and  reflecting  not  only 
the  power  and  the  glory  of  God,  but  also  his 
goodness  and  wisdom  and  love.  For  ages 
God  had  been  waiting  patiently  for  the  evo- 
[45] 


WHO  ARE  THE  UNITARIANS? 

lution  of  just  such  a  medium.  When  it  ap- 
peared, he  breathed  into  it  his  spirit  and  it 
became  a  hving  soul.  This  is  the  real  mira- 
cle of  the  incarnation.  It  is  not  the  incarna- 
tion of  God  in  the  person  of  one  man  cen- 
turies ago,  but  the  progressive  embodiment 
of  the  life  of  God  in  the  souls  of  men 
throughout  the  ages.  In  the  words  of  R.  J. 
Campbell,  "All  human  history  is  the  pro- 
gressive incarnation  of  God,"  and  all  human 
life  "divine,  and  eternal,  integral  to  the  being 
of  God." 

Let  us  assume,  also,  that  there  has  been 
a  constant  evolution  of  this  higher  medium, 
until,  at  length,  there  appears  one  with  a  soul 
so  sensitive  to  every  breath  of  the  eternal 
spirit  and  a  will  so  in  accord  with  the  divine 
will  that  in  him  men  thought  that  they  be- 
held the  Father  himself.  They  said,  "This 
is  the  Christ,  the  Son  of  the  hving  God." 
And  yet  his  value  for  our  moral  and  spiritual 
life  lies  in  the  fact  that  this  Christ  never 
transcends  human  limits.  In  him  we  see 
humanity  at  its  best.  Whatever  differences 
there  may  be  between  him  and  us  are  differ- 
[46] 


JESUS 

ences  of  degree  and  not  of  kind.     What  he 
was,  we  are  destined  to  become. 

"Progress  is  the  law  of  life^  man  is  not 

Man  as  yet, 
Nor  shall   I  deem   his   object  served, 

his  end 
Attained" 


until 


"all  mankind   alike   is   perfected.' 


Browning  is  right.  Our  task  on  earth  will 
never  be  accomplished  until  all  mankind  is 
perfected,  until  all  grow  into  the  stature  of 
perfect  manhood  as  revealed  to  us  in  Jesus. 
This  is  the  Unitarian  conception  of  Jesus. 
He  is  not  a  God  to  be  worshipped  but  a 
leader  to  be  followed.  As  President  Burton 
has  said:  "He  was  all  God  could  be  in 
human  terms."  If  we  would  know  the  ef- 
fectiveness of  such  a  conception  we  have 
only  to  turn  to  the  lives  of  those  who  have 
cherished  it.  It  has  been  maintained  that 
the  strength  of  orthodoxy  is  its  loyalty  to  the 
personal  Christ  and  its  sense  of  dependence 
upon  him,  both  of  which  are  supposed  to  be 
[47] 


WHO  ARE  THE  UNITAHIANS? 

confirmed  by  a  belief  in  his  deity.  Also  that 
the  weakness  of  liberal  Christianity  is  its 
failure  to  inspire  this  feeling  of  personal  loy- 
alty and  responsibility.  But  why?  Why 
should  the  man  Jesus  exercise  a  less  potent 
influence  for  good  than  the  deified  Jesus? 
Why  should  his  appeal  to  our  personal  alle- 
giance be  less  imperative  and  strong?  Why 
should  we  think  less  of  one  who  is  capable 
of  being  a  real  leader  than  of  one  who  at 
best  is  only  a  play  actor  on  the  cosmic  stage  ? 
Must  intelligence  always  be  purchased  at  the 
expense  of  faith,  and  independence  at  the 
•expense  of  devotion? 

Today  the  world  yearns  as  never  before 
for  Christian  unity.  One  of  the  greatest 
steps  toward  the  achievement  of  this  goal 
would  be  the  acceptance,  by  all  Christian 
people,  of  this  humanitarian  conception  of 
the  person  and  work  of  Jesus.  At  heart  the 
great  majority  of  them  accept  it  today. 
Evangelical  Christians  have  tried  to  make 
the  belief  in  the  deity  of  Christ  the  sole  con- 
dition of  religious  fellowship  and  yet  their 
very  language  proves  that  what  they  have 
[48] 


JESUS 

in  mind  is  not  deity  but  divinity.  They 
criticize  the  hberal  churches  for  their  denial 
of  the  divinity  of  Jesus,  when  what  they  have 
in  mind  is  not  divinity  but  deity.  Has  not 
the  time  come  to  put  an  end  to  this  purely 
verbal  controversy,  accustom  ourselves  to  the 
same  vocabulary,  and  unite  in  such  loyal  de- 
votion to  one  common  Lord  and  Master  that 
all  speculation  as  to  his  deity  or  divinity 
shall  be  swallowed  up  in  the  consciousness 
of  his  perfect  humanity?  Admit,  with 
Tennyson,  that  he  was 

"Most  human  and  yet  most  divine, 
The  flower  of  man  and  God." 

and  we  can  say,  with  Richard  Watson 
Gilder: 

"If  Jesus  Christ  is  a  man, 

And  only  a  man,  I  say 
That  of  all  mankind  I  cleave  to  him 

And  to  him  will  I  cleave  alway; 

If  Jesus  Christ  is  a  God, 

And  the  only  God,  I  swear 
I  will  follow  him  through  heaven  and  hell, 

The  earth,  the  sea  and  the  air." 

[49] 


Know  ye  not  that  ye  are  the  temple  of  God 
and  that  the  spirit  of  God  dwelleth  in  you. 

1  Corinthians  III,  16. 


THE  HOLY  SPIRIT 

SECOND  only  in  importance  to  the  be- 
lief concerning  the  person  and  work  of 
Jesus  is  that  concerning  the  office  and  func- 
tion of  the  Holy  Spirit.  Both  problems 
have  their  origin  in  the  gradual  disintegra- 
tion of  the  traditional  doctrine  of  the  Trin- 
ity. In  other  days  the  solution  was  per- 
fectly simple.  The  Holy  Spirit  was  the 
third  member  in  that  Trinity,  sharing  with 
the  Father  and  the  Son  the  honor  of  repre- 
senting the  divine  Being.  As  such  he  was 
a  distinct  personality,  with  functions  quite 
distinct  from  those  of  the  other  two.  Now 
that  we  have  restored  to  God  his  absolute 
and  undivided  unity  and  assigned  to  Jesus 
his  rightful  place  among  men,  what  becomes 
of  the  Holy  Spirit?  Can  we  think  of  it  as 
an  independent  personality,  contending  the 
absoluteness  of  the  Father?  Or  as  the  third 
member  in  a  metaphysical  and  wholly  incom- 
prehensible Trinity?  Or  must  we  think  of 
[53] 


WHO  ARE  THE  UNITARIANS? 

it  as  the  power  of  God,  working  silently 
but  persistently,  and  conforming  all  things 
to  his  will?  It  is  to  this  latter  view  that 
Unitarians  are  irrevocably  committed. 

The  traditional  doctrine  was  the  result  of 
a  gradual  growth.  When  St.  Paul  made 
his  second  visit  to  Ephesus,  he  found  there 
a  httle  group  of  Christians,  converts  of 
ApoUos,  and  asked:  "Did  ye  receive  the 
Holy  Spirit  when  ye  believed?"  They  re- 
plied :  "We  did  not  so  much  as  hear  whether 
there  is  a  Holy  Spirit."  Three  centuries 
later  Gregory  of  Nanzianzus,  one  of  the 
church  fathers,  wrote :  "Of  our  thoughtful 
men,  some  regard  the  Holy  Spirit  as  an  op- 
eration, some  as  a  creature,  some  as  God, 
while  others  are  at  a  loss  to  decide,  seeing 
that  the  Scripture  determines  nothing  on 
this  subject."  Shortly  before  his  death  Pro- 
fessor Royce,  of  Harvard,  declared  that 
"The  central  problem  in  our  present  attempt 
at  a  theology  must  be  that  which  traditional 
Christian  theology  has  so  strangely  neg- 
lected, the  problem  of  what  the  religious  con- 
sciousness has  called  the  Holy  Spirit." 
[54] 


THE  HOLY  SPIRIT 

**Here,"  he  adds,  "lies  the  real  central  idea 
of  any  distinctive  Christian  metaphysic." 
These  quotations  suggest  the  stages  through 
which  the  doctrine  has  passed.  First,  igno- 
rance of  the  Spirit's  existence;  second,  un- 
certainty as  to  its  nature  and  function;  and 
third,  conviction  as  to  its  importance  as  cen- 
tral to  an  intelligent  understanding  of  the 
Christian  faith. 

In  the  New  Testament  the  Holy  Spirit  is 
the  medium  of  revelation  and  the  instrument 
of  the  divine  activity.  In  the  birth  stories 
it  usurps  the  place  of  the  natural  father  and 
Jesus  is  born  of  a  virgin.  At  the  baptism 
it  descends  upon  Jesus  in  the  form  of  a  dove. 
When  Jesus  is  about  to  leave  his  disciples 
he  promises  to  send  the  Holy  Spirit  to  com- 
fort them  and  to  guide  them  into  a  larger 
understanding  of  the  truth.  The  one  unfor- 
givable sin  is  blasphemy  against  the  Holy 
Spirit.  At  Pentecost  it  was  the  descent  of 
the  Holy  Spirit  which  accounted  for  the 
marvellous  phenomena  which  we  associate 
with  that  day.  St.  Paul  is  so  convinced  that 
it  is  the  presence  of  the  Holy  Spirit  which 
[55] 


WHO  ARE  THE  UNITARIANS? 

accounts  for  Jesus'  power  that  he  does  not 
attempt  to  differentiate  one  from  the  other. 
He  uses  the  terms  interchangeably.  Now  it 
is  Christ  that  dwells  in  the  new  convert  and 
makes  him  a  new  creature  and  again  it  is 
the  Spirit.  Once  he  says  unequivocally, 
*'Now  the  Lord,"  meaning  the  risen  Christ, 
not  the  historical  Jesus,  "Now  the  Lord  is 
the  Spirit."  The  apostolic  benediction  alone 
attempts  a  differentiation.  That  is  why 
it  is  so  often  interpreted  as  a  Trinitarian 
formula.  If  so  it  could  not  have  been  used 
by  Paul.  Whatever  else  he  may  have  been, 
he  was  not  a  Trinitarian.  Writing  to  the 
Christians  at  Corinth  he  asks  that  the  grace 
that  had  been  manifest  in  Jesus  might  be 
manifest  in  them,  that  the  love  of  God  which 
had  been  the  source  of  his  inspiration  might 
be  with  them,  and  that  the  consciousness  of 
fellowship  with  the  Father  through  the  in- 
dwelling of  his  spirit  might  also  be  theirs. 
It  requires  some  imagination  to  see  in  this 
an  affirmation  of  the  Trinity. 

The  doctrine  of  the  Trinity  had  its  origin 
in  the  custom  of  joining  together,  for  litur- 
[56] 


THE  HOLY  SPIRIT 

gical  purposes,  the  terms  Father,  Son  and 
Holy  Spirit.  A  familiar  instance  is  the  bap- 
tismal formula  in  which  Jesus  bids  his  dis- 
ciples baptize  in  the  name  of  these  three. 
At  first  there  was  no  attempt  to  unite  them 
as  separate  persons  in  one  Godhead,  or  to 
conceive  of  them  as  distinct  personalities. 
When,  however,  the  necessity  for  a  definite 
creed  arose,  this  baptismal  formula  presented 
itself  as  a  most  convenient  skeleton  or  frame- 
work. A  study  of  the  great  creeds  of 
Christendom,  the  Apostles',  the  Nicene  and 
the  Athanasian,  will  demonstrate  that  each 
is  simply  the  elaboration  of  this  primitive 
formula. 

Even  when  the  Holy  Spirit  came  to  be 
regarded  as  the  third  member  in  the  Trinity, 
its  subordinate  position  was  scrupulously 
maintained.  In  the  earliest  draft  of  the 
Apostles'  creed,  dating  from  the  second  cen- 
tury, twelve  words  are  devoted  to  God, 
seventy  to  Jesus  and  only  six  to  the  Holy 
Spirit.  For  six  centuries  the  simple  state- 
ment, "I  believe  in  the  Holy  Spirit,"  re- 
mained practically  unchanged.  The  great 
[57] 


WHO  ARE  THE  UNITARIANS? 

controversies  of  the  early  church  raged  about 
the  nature  of  God  and  the  person  and  work 
of  Christ.  BeHef  in  the  Holy  Spirit  was 
admitted  with  no  attempt  to  define  its  nature 
or  to  prescribe  its  function.  Later  attempts 
at  definition  led  to  a  controversy  which  rent 
the  church  in  twain.  To  this  day  the  chief 
distinction  between  the  Greek  and  the  Ro- 
man divisions  of  the  Catholic  church  is  that 
one  believes  that  the  Holy  Spirit  proceeds 
from  the  Father  alone,  the  other  that  it  comes 
forth  from  both  the  Father  and  the  Son. 
Those  who  stand  wholly  outside  of  the  con- 
troversy cannot  understand  how,  if  it  is  a 
distinct  personality,  it  can  proceed  from 
either.  And  yet,  in  spite  of  these  differences 
of  interpretation,  a  dogma  which  is  unscrip- 
tural,  unscientific  and  illogical,  is  still  re- 
tained as  a  part  of  the  ecclesiastical  furniture 
of  certain  churches  under  the  assumption 
that  it  is  essential  to  the  Christian  life.  The 
continued  existence  of  our  free  churches  is 
an  emphatic  protest  against  this  assumption. 
One  of  the  characteristics  of  the  newer  re- 
ligious thinking  is  that  it  substitutes  common 
[58] 


THE  HOLY  SPIRIT 

sense  for  metaphysical  speculation  and  clear- 
ness of  thought  for  an  unreasoning  faith. 
After  centuries  of  theological  controversy  it 
enables  us  to  say,  with  St.  Paul,  "To  us  there 
is  one  God,  the  Father ;  and  one  Lord,  Jesus 
Christ;  and  one  Spirit,  by  which  we  are  all 
baptized  into  one  body."  With  this  change 
of  attitude  the  Holy  Spirit  assumes  a 
position  of  dignity  and  importance.  It  is 
the  inevitable  corollary  of  a  belief  in  the  di- 
vine immanence.  As  long  as  God  was 
thought  of  as  transcendent,  dwelling  some- 
where apart  from  his  world,  it  was  only 
through  the  Spirit  that  he  could  have  inter- 
course with  that  world.  With  an  immanent 
God  such  mediation  becomes  superfluous. 
The  Holy  Spirit  is  God  himself  at  work  in 
his  world.  The  divine  life  has  been  present 
in  the  world  from  the  beginning.  Through- 
out the  ages  it  has  expressed  itself  in  ever 
higher  forms  of  consciousness.  In  the  He- 
brew people,  because  of  their  inherent  re- 
ligiousness, it  found  its  freest  channel.  And 
in  Jesus  Christ,  a  Jewish  peasant,  it  found 
its  highest  expression.  It  was  through  this 
[59] 


WHO  ARE  THE  UNITARIANS? 

indwelling  Spirit  that  he  became  the  supreme 
revelation  of  God  to  man,  "all  that  God 
could  be  in  human  terms." 

This  is  the  only  conception  of  the  nature 
and  function  of  the  Holy  Spirit  which  is 
compatible  with  that  theory  of  the  universe 
and  its  relation  to  God  which  is  the  basis 
of  all  present-day  thinking.  Science  has 
taught  us  to  recognize  a  spiritual  force,  an 
infinite  personality,  at  the  heart  of  the  uni- 
verse, animating  it  and  dominating  it  as  the 
soul  animates  and  dominates  the  body.  It 
has  also  taught  us  that  there  can  be  no  con- 
sistent theory  of  the  universe  which  fails  to 
take  account  of  its  highest  product,  man  him- 
self. If  the  world  is  a  unity,  we  must  be  a 
part  of  that  larger  unity,  and  the  same 
power  which  manifests  itself  in  the  world 
at  large  must  throb  and  pulsate  in  us.  This 
does  not  imply  that  all  are  reduced  to  one 
dead  level  of  uniformity.  There  is  diver- 
sity even  in  spiritual  gifts.  The  capacity 
to  receive  determines  the  ability  to  reveal. 
One  may  be  a  Jesus,  another  a  Paul,  an- 
other the  most  ordinary  type  of  humanity, 
[60] 


THE  HOLY  SPIRIT 

but  it  is  the  same  spirit  which  fills  them  all, 
each  according  to  his  capacity.  The  life 
which  animates  us  is  a  part  of  the  life  of 
God.  The  love  which  binds  us  to  one  an- 
other is  a  reflection  of  his  love.  The  will 
which  keeps  us  constant  to  an  ever  ascending 
goal  is  an  expression  of  his  purpose.  The 
sense  of  right  and  duty  which  informs  that 
will  and  helps  to  determine  our  conduct  is 
but  another  name  for  that  "stern  daughter 
of  the  voice  of  God"  who  holds  the  worlds 
in  her  embrace  and  ^'prevents  the  very  stars 
from  going  wrong." 

Thus  an  attempt  to  know  and  to  under- 
stand our  common  human  nature  brings  us 
irresistibly  to  the  conclusion  that  the  Holy 
Spirit  is  still  a  constant  factor  in  human  life 
and  destiny.  The  hfe  that  thrills  our  be- 
ing, the  love  that  gives  significance  to  life, 
the  will  that  enables  love  to  express  itself 
in  action,  and  the  conscience  that  keeps  that 
action  clean  and  pure,  are  but  differing 
phases  of  the  life  of  God  in  the  souls  of 
men.  They  are  just  as  real  and  just  as 
significant  as  the  energy  that  drives  the 
[61] 


WHO  ARE  THE  UNITARIANS? 

world  on  in  its  course,  or  the  affinity  that 
holds  its  parts  tos^ether,  or  the  force  that 
enables  it  to  do  its  work,  or  the  system  of 
checks  and  balances  that  keeps  that  force 
within  certain  prescribed  bounds.  All  alike 
point  to  the  presence  of  a  living,  loving,  will- 
ing and  beneficent  personality  who  in- 
habiteth  the  eternities  and  yet  is  not  far 
from  any  one  of  us. 

"Speak  to  him  thou,  for  he  hears, 
And  spirit  with  spirit  can  meet; 

Closer  is  he  than  breathing, 
Nearer  than  hands   or   feet." 

Today  this  conception  of  the  Holy  Spirit 
as  but  another  name  for  God  at  work  in  his 
world  is  accepted  by  many  who  repudiate 
the  Unitarian  name.  Nowhere  do  we  find 
it  more  clearly  expressed  than  in  "The  Chris- 
tian Doctrine  of  God,"  by  Dr.  William  New- 
ton Clarke,  an  orthodox  scholar  of  ffood  and 
regular  standing.  He  declares  that  God  ex- 
presses himself  not  onlv  in  Christ,  but  also  in 
the  Holy  Spirit.  "  The  Spirit  is  Himself, 
God  within."  Its  function  is  to  continue,  in 
[62] 


THE  HOLY  SPIRIT 

the  individual  and  the  race,  the  work  which 
Jesus  began.  "God,  through  Christ,  is 
normahzing  men,"  bringing  them  to  the 
proper  hfe  and  character  as  sons.  The 
Spirit  is  called  holy  only  in  contrast  with  an 
unholy  world.  It  is  "God  in  his  people." 
Dr.  Clarke  concludes:  "God  himself  is  the 
Father;  God  himself  is  the  divine  in  the 
Son;  and  God  himself  is  the  Holy  Spirit." 
Today  this  is  good  orthodoxy.  It  is  also 
good  Unitarianism.  It  is  the  attitude  of  the 
Christian  world  toward  this  conception 
which  will  determine  the  religion  of  the  fu- 
ture. The  religion  of  Jesus  was  primarily 
the  religion  of  the  Father.  It  was  based 
upon  the  family  relationship  raised  to  infi- 
nite power.  The  religion  of  the  early  church 
was  the  religion  of  the  Son.  It  centred  in 
the  person  and  work  of  Christ.  More  and 
more  the  religion  of  today  is  becoming  es- 
sentially the  religion  of  the  Spirit.  We  have 
given  up  all  questions  as  to  its  procession 
from  the  Father  or  the  Son.  We  are  try- 
ing to  forget  that  it  was  ever  the  third  mem- 
ber in  an  impossible  Trinity.  We  are  ac- 
[63] 


WHO  ARE  THE  UNITARIANS? 

customing  ourselves  to  think  of  it  as  "  the 
perpetual  witness  of  the  life  of  God  in  the 
soul  of  man."  As  Dr.  Peabody  has  said: 
"It  is  the  immanent  power  of  science,  the 
progressive  revelation  of  philosophy,  the 
undeparting  and  undiminished  inspiration  of 
religion." 

This  is  the  conception  which  must  more 
and  more  commend  itself  to  thoughtful  men 
and  women.  Churches  may  continue  to  dif- 
fer in  their  dogmas  and  creeds,  Christian 
men  and  women  may  differ  in  their  belief 
and  practice,  and  yet  all  may  unite  in  the 
simple  but  sufficient  affirmation,  ''We  be- 
lieve in  the  Holy  Spirit."  Just  as  we  can- 
not think  of  the  sun  apart  from  its  rays  of 
light  and  heat,  so  we  cannot  think  of  God 
apart  from  that  subtle  influence  which  radi- 
ates from  him  and  gives  life  and  light  to  the 
world.  It  is  none  other  than  the  spirit  of 
the  living  God,  spiritual  because  he  is  Spirit, 
holy  because  he  is  Holy.  Science  affirms 
that  the  world  in  which  we  live  is  a  spiritual 
world;  faith  assures  us  that  the  spirit  which 
upholds  and  sustains  it  is  the  spirit  of  the 
[64] 


THE  HOLY  SPIRIT 

living  God ;  and  the  experience  of  every  day 
teaches  us  that  it  is  that  same  spirit  which 
dwells  in  us  and  makes  us  his  temples. 

"Go  notj  my  soul,  in  search  of  him, 
Thou  wilt  not  find  him  there, — 

Or  in  the  depths  of  shadow  dim, 
Or  heights  of  upper  air. 

For  not  in  far-off  realms  of  space 
The  Spirit  hath   its   throne; 

In  every  heart  it  findeth  place 
And  waiteth  to  be  known." 


[65] 


Every  scripture  inspired  of  God  is  also  profitable 
for  teaching,  for  reproof,  for  correction  and  for  in- 
struction which  is  in  righteousness. 

2  Timothy  III,  16. 


[67] 


THE  BIBLE 

THE  Unitarian  attitude  toward  the 
Bible  derives  its  chief  importance  from 
the  frequent  assertion  that  we  do  not  believe 
in  the  Bible.  All  that  this  statement  means 
is  that  we  do  not  accept  this  or  any  other 
book  as  our  sole  guide  in  morals  and  religion. 
We  regard  the  Bible  as  a  human  document, 
written  by  men  and  for  men,  and  subject  to 
the  ordinary  rules  of  criticism  and  research. 
Today  this  attitude  is  shared  by  the  more 
scholarly  men  in  all  denominations.  The 
Outlook  stated  recently  that  "It  is  clearly 
worse  than  futile  for  clergymen  to  insist  that 
there  has  been  no  such  revolution.  It  is 
clearly  their  duty  to  prepare  their  congre- 
gations to  meet  it  by  showing  them  that  the 
religious  hfe  is  not  identified  with  or  depen- 
dent upon  the  old,  unscientific  view  of  the 
scripture  as  an  infallible  rule  of  faith  and 
practice." 

It  would  be  difficult  to  find  a  more  glar- 
[69] 


WHO  ARE  THE  UNITARIANS? 

ing  inconsistency  than  that  between  the 
world's  estimate  of  the  Bible  and  its  ignor- 
ance of  the  Bible.  Here  is  a  book  which  is 
found  upon  the  pulpit  of  every  Christian 
church.  It  is  to  be  seen,  often  in  an  excel- 
lent state  of  preservation,  in  almost  every 
Christian  home.  It  is  the  chief  text-book 
in  our  schools  of  religious  education.  Lists 
of  the  world's  best  literature,  coming  from 
the  most  divergent  sources,  give  it  first  place. 
When  President  EHot  was  asked  why  he  had 
omitted  it  from  his  six-foot  book  shelf  for 
Harvard  men,  he  replied  that  he  had  as- 
sumed that  it  would  be  found  in  the  pos- 
session of  every  Harvard  graduate.  It  has 
been  printed  in  more  languages  and  cir- 
culated in  more  lands  than  any  other  book. 
And  yet,  over  against  these  facts,  testifying 
to  the  world's  appreciation  of  its  intrinsic 
worth,  we  find  the  most  colossal  ignorance  of 
its  character  and  contents.  There  are  multi- 
tudes of  people  who  seem  amazed  when  told 
that  it  is  not  a  book  at  all,  but  a  collection  of 
books,  and  that  its  nearest  analogy  today  is 
not  some  religious  or  theological  treatise  but 
[70] 


THE  BIBLE 

one  of  the  many  libraries  of  the  world's  best 
literature.  As  to  the  authorship  and  dates 
of  the  various  books  of  which  it  is  composed, 
or  the  growth  of  its  several  canons  or  groups, 
or  its  interpretation  in  the  light  of  present- 
day  criticism,  the  great  masses  of  men  and 
women  are  hopelessly  uninformed. 

How  are  we  to  account  for  this  situation? 
How  are  we  to  reconcile  the  apparent  appre- 
ciation and  the  seeming  neglect?  It  is  due 
to  the  fact  that  the  traditional  conception 
of  the  Bible  and  the  conventional  methods 
of  Bible  study  have  alienated  the  great  ma- 
jority of  thinking  people.  No  arguments 
based  upon  intellectual  or  moral  considera- 
tions have  any  weight  if  opposed  to  one  soli- 
tary proof  text.  Passages  are  wrested  from 
their  context  and  twisted  in  their  meaning 
for  the  purpose  of  supporting  theological 
statements  which  often  are  irrational  and 
sometimes  repugnant  to  the  moral  sense.  It 
is  this  misuse  of  the  Bible  which  has  made 
it,  in  the  words  of  Reginald  Campbell,  "one 
of  the  greatest  stumbling-blocks  to  spiritual 
religion." 

[71] 


WHO  ARE  THE  UNITARIANS? 

This  method  of  interpretation  is  a  heritage 
from  the  time  when  Christianity  was  eman- 
cipating itself  from  the  yoke  of  the  Roman 
church.  The  Protestant  Reformation  was 
undertaken  in  the  name  of  the  individual  rea- 
son and  conscience  but  its  leaders  did  not 
dare  to  trust  their  new-found  freedom. 
They  repudiated  one  authority  only  to  sub- 
mit themselves  to  another.  In  place  of  a 
divinely  instituted  church  they  installed  a 
divinely  inspired  book.  According  to 
Catholic  theory,  the  inspired  book  must  be 
interpreted  by  an  infallible  church.  What- 
ever errors  it  might  seem  to  contain  could 
then  be  explained  away  by  the  interpreters. 
But  Protestantism  found  itself  burdened 
with  an  infallible  book  for  which  there  was 
no  such  interpreter,  and  therefore  no  safe- 
guard against  error.  Between  these  two 
theories  of  interpretation,  reason  and  com- 
mon sense  are  both  on  the  side  of  the  Roman 
CathoHc.  Either  we  must  abandon  alto- 
gether the  fetish  of  an  infallible  book,  or  we 
must  find  some  way  to  secure  an  infallible 
interpreter. 

[72] 


THE  BIBLE 

Unitarians  prefer  to  abandon  the  fetish. 
In  common  with  all  thinking  people,  they 
recognize  but  two  alternatives.  The  Bible 
is  either  a  divine  institution  or  a  human  docu- 
ment. Either  it  is  wholly  inspired,  in  the 
sense  that  every  word  is  the  word  of  God, 
dictated  and  transmitted  without  error,  or 
it  is  inspired  only  in  the  sense  that  all  truth 
is  from  God  and  that  every  expression  of 
truth,  whatever  its  source,  is  a  divine  revela- 
tion. To  those  who  are  acquainted  with  the 
history  of  the  Bible,  its  different  versions, 
its  scientific  and  historical  inaccuracies,  its 
conflicting  expressions  of  moral  and  religious 
truth,  the  first  alternative  is  impossible.  It 
deserves  to  be  laid  away  with  the  theory 
of  a  geocentric  universe  and  a  stationary 
earth. 

The  other  alternative  affords  us  all  that  is 
needed  to  inspire  a  reverence  for  the  Bible 
as,  to  quote  Abraham  Lincoln's  words,  "The 
best  book  God  has  given  to  men."  It  is  a 
record  of  the  thoughts  and  aspirations  and 
ideals  of  the  most  religious  people  of  the 
ancient  world.  Nowhere  can  we  find  more 
[73] 


WHO  ARE  THE  UNITARIANS? 

exalted  conceptions  of  the  character  of  God 
or  loftier  ideals  of  the  conduct  of  man.  It 
is  not  an  infallible  utterance  of  moral  and 
religious  truth  and  it  cannot  be  used  as  an 
infallible  guide  to  either  faith  or  practice, 
but  rightly  interpreted,  it  nourishes  and  sus- 
tains the  moral  and  spiritual  life  of  the  race 
as  no  other  book  does  or  can. 

What  has  given  us  this  newer  method  of 
interpretation?  It  is  the  much  misunder- 
stood and  much  abused  higher  criticism. 
There  is  nothing  concerning  which  there  has 
been  so  much  inexcusable  misunderstanding 
and  unreasoning  fear.  It  has  been  de- 
nounced as  hostile  to  the  Bible  and  to  reli- 
gion. It  has  been  characterized  as  destruc- 
tive of  the  foundations  of  faith  and  morals. 
And  yet  it  is  this  which  has  made  the  Bible 
intelligible  and  helpful  to  modern  men  and 
women.  Without  it,  it  would  long  since 
have  been  relegated  to  oblivion  by  all  who 
have  emancipated  themselves  from  the  fet- 
ters of  credulity  and  superstition.  If  com- 
pelled to  choose  between  the  Bible  as  every- 
where the  word  of  God  and  no  Bible  at  all, 
[74] 


THE  BIBLE 

one's  choice  would  be  no  Bible  at  all.  When 
permitted  to  choose  between  an  intelligent 
understanding  of  the  Bible  and  ignorance  of 
its  profound  moral  and  religious  truths,  there 
is  but  one  alternative. 

And  what  is  this  higher  criticism?  How 
is  it  differentiated  from  any  other  criticism? 
It  is  the  criticism  of  the  Bible  books  and  of 
the  documents  upon  which  they  are  based 
considered  as  wholes.  It  is  only  in  this  re- 
spect that  it  differs  from  the  lower  criticism. 
One  is  textual,  the  other  documental.  One 
deals  with  particular  words  and  phrases,  the 
other  with  whole  books  or  groups  of  books. 
One  seeks  to  discover  the  true  reading  of  the 
Bible  text  and  to  ascertain  its  original  mean- 
ing; the  other  seeks  to  establish  its  genuine- 
ness and  authenticity  and  to  demonstrate  its 
credibility  and  trustworthiness.  Thus  be- 
tween the  two  there  can  be  no  jealousy  or 
antagonism.  They  occupy  different  fields; 
they  deal  with  different  sets  of  facts;  they 
are  directed  toward  different  ends.  To  say 
that  one  is  higher  than  the  other  in  the  sense 
that  it  calls  for  the  exercise  of  higher  facul- 
[75] 


WHO  ARE  THE  UNITARIANS? 

ties  is  to  say  what  would  be  repudiated  by 
every  member  of  both  schools. 

The  question  is  often  raised  as  to  whether 
the  higher  criticism  is  constructive  or  de- 
structive. Such  a  query  has  no  significance 
whatsoever  for  one  who  is  at  all  familiar 
with  the  processes.  In  its  aim  it  is  neither; 
in  its  methods  it  is  both.  It  is  simply  the 
application  to  the  Bible  literature  of  the  most 
approved  scientific  and  critical  methods. 
These  methods  are  destructive  only  in  the 
sense  that  the  destruction  of  error  is  often 
the  necessary  preparation  for  the  discovery 
of  truth.  The  tearing  down  and  the  build- 
ing up  are  parts  of  one  and  the  same  pro- 
cess. The  same  is  true  of  all  search  for 
truth.  We  do  not  hesitate  to  destroy  old 
error  if  thereby  some  new  truth  can  be  re- 
vealed, and  we  judge  of  the  process  by  the 
end  achieved,  not  by  the  means  employed. 
When  Copernicus  demonstrated  that  the 
earth  revolves  around  the  sun  he  destroyed 
forever  the  old  Ptolemaic  theory  that  the 
sun  revolves  around  the  earth.  When 
Columbus  proved  that  the  earth  is  a  globe 
[76] 


THE  BIBLE 

by  sailing  round  it,  he  destroyed  forever  the 
theory  that  it  is  a  flat  surface,  with  its  four 
corners.  The  destructive  work  of  the 
higher  critics  has  been  of  this  sort.  It  has 
destroyed,  "not  the  Scriptures,  not  theology, 
not  religion,  but  only  a  wrong  interpretation 
of  the  Scriptures,  a  narrow  conception  of 
theolog}^  and  the  pagan  features  of  reli- 
gion." When  it  was  demonstrated  that 
several  different  authors  collaborated  in  the 
composition  of  the  first  five  books  of  the  Old 
Testament,  it  was  not  necessary  for  the 
higher  critic  to  assure  us  that  they  could  not 
have  been  written  by  Moses  or  any  one  Old 
Testament  writer.  When  it  was  proved 
that  the  second  part  of  Isaiah  refers  to  events 
which  happened  more  than  one  hundred 
years  after  the  death  of  the  great  prophet  of 
that  name,  it  required  no  extraordinary  criti- 
cal power  to  infer  that  we  have  here  the  work 
of  at  least  two  different  men,  probably  more, 
living  more  than  a  century  apart,  and  all 
ascribed  to  a  single  writer.  This  is  the  kind 
of  destructive  work  which  it  has  been  the 
privilege  of  the  higher  critics  to  do,  and  for 
[77] 


WHO  ARE  THE  UNITARIANS? 

which  the  Christian  world  ought  to  be  pro- 
foundly grateful.  If  any  Christian  dogma 
has  been  destroyed  by  the  process,  it  is  fair  to 
assume  that  the  dogma  was  wrong.  Truth 
itself  cannot  be  destroyed  so  easily.  When 
any  theory,  Biblical  or  otherwise,  is  proved 
to  be  out  of  accord  with  the  facts,  it  is  only 
a  mistaken  sense  of  loyalty  which  insists 
upon  its  retention  and  abuses  those  who  have 
furnished  the  proof. 

The  Unitarian  conception  of  the  Bible 
rests  squarely  upon  the  results  of  the  work 
of  these  higher  critics.  We  no  longer  re- 
gard the  Bible  as  supernaturally  inspired. 
We  no  longer  look  upon  it  as  everywhere  the 
infallible  word  of  God.  We  no  longer  turn 
to  it  with  the  expectation  of  finding  precise 
directions  as  to  our  conduct  in  all  possible 
emergencies.  As  we  comprehend  its  nature 
and  understand  the  working  of  men's  minds 
in  unscientific  periods,  and  under  circum- 
stances similar  to  those  which  surrounded  the 
Bibhcal  writers,  we  detect  the  folly  of  any 
theory  of  infallibility  or  inerranc3\  "It  is 
worth  inquiring,"  writes  Professor  Youtz, 
[78] 


THE  BIBLE 

an  orthodox  scholar,  "whether  the  very- 
phrase  Holy  Bible  does  not  create  a  wrong 
mental  attitude,  an  attitude  of  Bibliolatry, 
toward  a  book  whose  effort  is  to  fix  our 
reverence  upon  the  only  One  who  is  Holy." 
And  yet  this  modern  attitude  does  not  lessen 
our  reverence  or  esteem  for  the  book  itself. 
The  fact  that  it  contains  historical  inaccura- 
cies and  verbal  ambiguities  does  not  make 
it  less  worthy  as  a  medium  for  the  revelation 
of  the  divine  will.  Because  of  the  lofty 
character  of  its  moral  and  religious  teaching 
and  the  light  which  it  throws  upon  the  origin 
and  character  of  the  best  religion  the  world 
has  yet  known,  we  cherish  a  reverence  for  it 
which  we  cherish  for  no  other  book  and  we 
give  to  it  a  place  in  our  affection  which  no 
other  book  can  occupy.  Interpreted  as  the 
infallible  word  of  God,  there  is  no  book  which 
can  so  fetter  the  intellect  and  retard  the 
moral  and  spiritual  development  of  the  race. 
Interpreted  as  the  fallible  utterance  of  men, 
it  is  still  profitable  for  teaching,  for  reproof, 
for  correction,  and  for  instruction  in  right- 
eousness. 

[79] 


And  as  he  was  praying  the  fashion  of  his  counte- 
nance was  altered  and  his  raiment  became  white  and 
dazzling. 

Luhe  IX,  29, 


PRAYER 

ONE  cannot  read  the  story  of  Jesus 
without  reahzing  the  strength  of  the 
moral  and  spiritual  impulse  which  he  brought 
into  the  world.  One  cannot  analyze  his  per- 
sonality without  gaining  a  new  insight  into 
the  secret  of  his  power.  His  was  primarily 
a  life  of  prayer.  The  closer  he  came  into 
contact  with  men,  the  more  frequently  he 
sought  to  enter  into  communion  with  God. 
The  more  strenuous  the  demands  made  upon 
his  time  and  strength,  the  more  often  he  went 
apart  to  pray.  It  was  during  the  quiet 
hours  which  he  spent  in  the  wilderness  or 
upon  the  mount  that  he  received  the  moral 
energy  and  spiritual  power  which  enabled 
him  to  sway  the  multitudes.  At  such  times 
he  is  said  to  have  been  so  exalted  that  face 
and  form  were  alike  transfigured. 

It  is  not  surprising  that  this  habit  of  Jesus 
should  have  made  a  profound  impression 
upon  his  disciples.     They  were  familiar  with 
[83] 


WHO  ARE  THE  UNITARIANS? 

the  perfunctory  prayers  of  temple  and  syna- 
gogue, and  with  the  long  petitions,  stereo- 
typed in  form  and  empty  of  effect,  by  which 
religious  zealots  sought  to  draw  attention  to 
themselves  upon  the  street  corners,  but  here 
was  a  form  of  grayer  which  seemed  to  do 
something.  It  was  capable  of  reviving  one's 
flagging  energies,  strengthening  his  purpose 
and  sending  him  back  to  his  work  with  new 
courage  and  enthusiasm.  Can  we  wonder 
that  they  desired  to  share  the  privilege  ?  Or 
that,  upon  one  occasion,  they  became  suffi- 
ciently emboldened  to  exclaim,  "Lord,  teach 
us  to  pray." 

The  prayer  which  was  given  in  response 
to  this  request  has  become  a  classic  among 
liturgical  utterances.  Its  simplicity,  its  at- 
mosphere of  trust,  its  unselfish  spirit,  all 
combine  to  give  it  a  permanent  place  in  the 
liturgies  of  the  church.  And  yet  it  is  doubt- 
ful if  Jesus  intended  to  establish  a  fixed 
form.  He  little  thought  that  the  words  that 
he  uttered  would  be  repeated  today  as  an  al- 
most universal  petition  among  Christian  peo- 
ple. He  sought  to  give  his  disciples  a  model 
[84] 


PRAYER 

which  they  might  follow  in  formulating  their 
own  prayers.  But  the  model  proved  to  be 
so  chaste  and  beautiful  that  it  was  treasured, 
almost  word  for  word,  by  the  disciples,  pre- 
served by  two  of  the  gospel  writers,  and  re- 
mains today  one  of  the  most  widely  recog- 
nized bonds  of  Christian  fellowship.  Catho- 
lic and  Protestant,  orthodox  and  heterodox, 
can  unite  in  this  series  of  simple  petitions  ad- 
dressed to  their  Father  who  is  in  Heaven. 
Such  an  experience  gives  rise  to  the  ques- 
tion, what  is  prayer?  What  is  it  that  has 
given  it  its  unique  place  in  the  religions  of  the 
world?  Whatever  differences  we  may  rec- 
ognize between  them,  all  are  one  in  their 
emphasis  upon  the  importance  of  this  habit. 
It  must  have  a  peculiar  purpose  in  order  to 
account  for  its  peculiar  power.  Prayer  may 
be  defined  as  the  response  of  the  soul  to  its 
spiritual  environment.  It  is  the  expression 
of  a  desire  to  come  into  touch  with  a  Power 
higher  and  holier  than  ourselves.  Every 
soul  that  is  at  all  sensitive  to  spiritual  reali- 
ties becomes  conscious  sooner  or  later  of 
great  spiritual  forces  which  surround  us  on 
[85] 


WHO  ARE  THE  UNITARIANS? 

every  hand  and  hold  us  continually  in  their 
embrace.  We  flatter  ourselves  that  we  are 
free,  that  we  shape  and  control  our  own 
destinies,  and  we  sing  with  enthusiasm, 

"I  am  the  master  of  my  fate, 
I  am  the  captain  of  my  soul." 

In  the  last  analysis,  however,  we  are  all  crea- 
tures of  destiny.  The  consciousness  of  our 
complete  dependence  upon  God  is  the  source 
of  our  power.  "It  is  he  that  hath  made  us, 
and  not  we  ourselves."  In  spite  of  our  ap- 
parent freedom  and  self-direction,  we  know 
that  above  us  and  within  us  and  around  us 
there  is  a  Power  over  which  we  have  no  con- 
trol and  which  is  constantly  influencing  our 
lives  for  either  good  or  ill. 

From  time  immemorial  men  have  sought 
to  come  into  conscious  relationship  with  that 
power.  They  have  sought  to  establish  some 
kind  of  fellowship  between  themselves  and 
their  moral  and  spiritual  environment.  Be- 
ing human  and  obliged  to  think  in  human 
terms,  they  have  resorted  to  methods  similar 
to  those  which  they  are  accustomed  to  use  in 
[86] 


PRAYER 

communicating  with  one  another.  Some- 
times the  attempt  has  taken  the  form  of 
spoken  petition  and  adoration  and  in  this 
way  have  grown  up  the  great  prayers  of  the 
ages,  dating  from  specific  periods  and  yet 
voicing  the  longings  and  aspirations  of  all 
time.  At  other  times  it  has  resorted  to  a 
sort  of  sign  language,  seeking  to  express  it- 
self in  postures  and  gestures,  in  ritual  and 
ceremonial.  Occasionally  it  has  ignored 
both  of  these  methods  and  contented  itself 
with  silent  communion  or  unspoken  aspira- 
tion, with  no  attempt  at  outward  expression. 
In  each  case,  however,  it  has  been  prayer, 
and  wherever  it  has  proceeded  from  a  sincere 
motive,  an  earnest  desire  to  bring  the  finite 
soul  into  touch  with  the  great  Over-soul,  it 
has  been  true  prayer. 

Scarcely  less  conspicuous  than  the  natural- 
ness and  universality  of  these  attempts  to 
estabhsh  conscious  relationship  with  some 
higher  power  has  been  their  diversity.  The 
attempts  have  been  high  or  low,  worthy  or 
unworthy,  according  to  one's  conception  of 
the  nature  of  this  higher  power.  Men  have 
[87] 


WHO  ARE  THE  UNITARIANS? 

prayed  to  sticks  and  stones  regarded  as 
fetishes  or  fashioned  into  idols.  They  have 
prayed  to  the  sun  and  moon  and  stars  and 
to  almost  every  object  of  nature.  They 
have  prayed  to  animals  and  to  other  men  as 
well  as  to  the  spirits  of  departed  ancestors 
and  to  the  multitudinous  variety  of  gods. 
They  have  looked  beyond  these  objects  of 
worship  to  the  power  which  was  manifest  in 
and  through  them  and  have  sought  to  come 
into  right  relations  with  that  power.  It  is 
a  far  cry  from  the  savage  praying  to  his 
war -god  to  give  him  victory  over  his  enemies 
to  the  publican  in  the  temple  praying,  "God 
be  merciful  to  me,  a  sinner,"  or  to  the  psalm- 
ist crying,  *'Lord,  create  in  me  a  clean  heart 
and  renew  within  me  a  right  spirit."  The 
gulf  is  even  wider  between  the  imprecatory 
psalms  of  the  Old  Testament  and  Jesus' 
prayer  in  the  New,  "Father,  forgive  them, 
for  they  know  not  what  they  do."  And  yet 
these  represent  varying  stages  in  the  evolu- 
tion of  the  attempt  to  give  expression  to  one 
of  the  most  fundamental  instincts  of  the  hu- 
man soul. 

[88] 


PRAYER 

The  most  casual  observer  must  be  aware 
that  there  has  been  a  dechne  in  the  habit  of 
prayer.  There  are  many  things  which  have 
contributed  to  this  dechne.  The  larger 
thought  of  God  has  led  many  to  shrink  from 
making  any  personal  demands  upon  his 
favor.  The  belief  in  law  as  unfailing  and 
immutable  has  made  many  of  the  ancient 
petitions  obsolete.  Why  agonize  in  spirit  if 
we  cannot  hope  that,  for  us,  aught  of  good 
or  ill  may  be  diverted  from  its  appointed 
path  ?  Why  wrestle  with  the  Almighty  if  he 
is  unable  to  alter  the  workings  of  a  single 
law  that  he  has  ordained  ?  Furthermore  the 
dread  of  all  pious  pretense  and  an  instinc- 
tive feehng  of  delicacy  have  made  it  increas- 
ingly difficult  for  men  to  expose  the  spiritual 
workings  of  their  souls  to  the  gaze  of  the 
unsympathetic  and  even  scornful  as  was  the 
custom  among  the  participants  in  the  old- 
fashioned  prayer  meeting.  To  this  may  be 
added  the  fact  that  the  restlessness  and  fever 
of  our  modern  way  of  living  tend  to  diminish 
the  opportunity  for  a  quiet  hour  in  which  to 
commune  with  the  Father  in  spirit  and  in 
[89] 


WHO  ARE  THE  UNITARIANS? 

truth.  And  yet  it  would  be  a  mistake  to  call 
this  a  prayerless  age.  It  is  not  that  men  do 
not  pray  but  that  they  do  not  find  it  as  easy 
to  give  outward  expression  to  their  prayers. 
The  ease  and  naturalness  with  which  some 
great  emergency  brings  an  involuntary 
prayer  to  the  lips,  so  that  men  pray  who 
never  prayed  before,  proves  how  close  to  the 
surface  the  prayerful  mood  lies. 

Thus  the  present  decline  in  the  habit  of 
prayer  is  largely  a  decline  in  outward  ex- 
pression. The  prayerful  mood  remains  but 
we  know  not  how  to  pray  as  we  ought.  Pub- 
lic prayer,  as  it  prevails  in  our  churches  and 
at  certain  public  functions,  has  been  safe- 
guarded by  tradition  and  custom,  but  not  so 
private  prayer.  It  is  a  fair  question  how 
long  public  prayer  can  survive  if  the  habit  of 
private  prayer  is  abandoned.  We  speak  of 
common  prayer,  but  prayer  is  not  common 
unless  it  voices  the  aspirations  and  longings 
of  those  who  are  present  and  awakens  a  re- 
sponse in  their  hearts.  Public  prayer  is  not 
a  performance  to  be  watched  or  heard;  it  is 
an  experience  to  be  shared.  And  how  can  it 
[90] 


PRAYER 

be  shared  unless  all  are  in  the  prayerful 
mood?  Without  a  certain  degree  of  pre- 
paredness common  prayer  becomes  an  impos- 
sibility. The  mind  is  occupied  with  irrele- 
vant matters.  It  lacks  that  perfect  abandon 
which  is  a  prerequisite.  One  purpose  of 
what  has  come  to  be  called  the  introductory 
service  is  to  induce  the  prayerful  mood. 
We  have  made  the  mistake  of  thinking  of 
it  as  introductory  to  the  sermon.  It  is  not. 
It  is  introductory  to  the  prayer.  Organ  pre- 
lude, anthem,  hymn,  scripture  reading,  all 
have  a  common  aim,  to  bring  about  this 
spiritual  preparedness  without  which  com- 
mon prayer  becomes  a  misnomer.  They 
have  their  natural  climax  in  the  words, 
"Let  us  pray."  The  impression  that  some 
churches  are  more  reverential  than  others  is 
due  in  no  small  degree  to  the  fact  that  in 
them  the  people  come  in  promptly,  sit  down 
quietly,  and  join  in  a  common  service  of  wor- 
ship; while  in  others  the  people  straggle  in 
one  by  one,  and  thoughtlessly  interrupt  the 
devotions  of  others  by  nodding  to  one  an- 
other or  whispering  or  indulging  in  equally 
[91] 


WHO  ARE  THE  UNITARIANS? 

reprehensible  forms  of  social  intercourse. 
It  may  be  that  none  of  these  constitutes  re- 
ligion ;  but  they  create  the  atmosphere  which 
is  favorable  to  the  prayerful  mood  and  con- 
sequently to  the  religious  life. 

Now  the  remedy  for  unpreparedness  is 
preparedness.  The  best  way  to  attain  the 
prayerful  mood  on  Sunday  is  to  accustom 
oneself  to  it  on  other  days  of  the  week.  We 
speak  of  God  as  the  gracious  giver  of  every 
good  and  perfect  gift.  Should  we  allow  one 
day  to  go  by  without  acknowledging  our 
indebtedness?  The  soul  that  does  not  de- 
vote a  portion  of  each  day  to  communion 
with  the  thinsfs  of  the  spirit  will  find  it  in- 
creasingly difficult  to  put  itself  into  an  at- 
titude of  communion  on.  Sunday.  The  oc- 
casional prayer,  the  instinctive  turning  to 
God  at  the  great  crises  of  life,  can  never  be 
wholly  abandoned.  But  what  of  the  insti- 
tution of  family  worship  ?  Nothing  has  been 
invented  which  has  done  more  to  lift  men  into 
the  atmosphere  of  the  spirit  and  to  give  them 
an  intimate  sense  of  the  presence  and  the 
power  of  God  than  this  one  institution.  The 
[92] 


PRAYER 

elaborate  morning  prayers  of  a  generation 
or  more  ago  have  gone  beyond  recall.  But 
the  increasing  number  of  families  in  which 
the  custom  is  to  begin  the  day  by  reading 
some  appropriate  passage  of  scripture  or 
some  inspiring  bit  of  verse  and  then  uniting 
in  the  Lord's  prayer  is  proof  that  the  insti- 
tution of  family  worship  is  based  upon  the 
recognition  of  a  spiritual  need  which  the  oc- 
casional public  prayer  cannot  satisfy.  It 
not  only  serves  to  pitch  the  life  of  each  new 
day  at  its  proper  level,  but  it  affords  an  op- 
portunity for  simple,  unostentatious  reli- 
gious expression  and  so  ministers  to  soul 
growth.  Thus  to  be  helpful,  prayer  must 
be  habitual.  To  receive  the  greatest  benefit 
from  public  prayer,  one  must  accustom  one- 
self to  private  prayer.  It  may  be  the  repe- 
tition of  some  familiar  petition  around  the 
family  altar,  or  the  quiet  talk  with  God  in 
the  seclusion  of  one's  own  closet,  but  in  either 
case  it  reenforces  the  conviction  that  we  are 
not  pilgrims  or  strangers  but  children  of  the 
household  of  God. 

And  now  what  of  the  answer  to  prayer? 
[93] 


WHO  ARE  THE  UNITARIANS? 

If  we  remember  that  the  primary  object  of 
prayer  is  not  petition  but  communion  we 
shall  not  be  seriously  concerned  about  the 
answer.  Some  prayers  ought  not  to  be  an- 
swered. To  attempt  to  dictate  the  blessings 
which  God  shall  bestow,  is  impiety.  To 
pray  that  for  us  the  laws  of  the  universe  may 
be  set  aside,  is  impertinence.  To  ask  for 
the  things  we  think  we  ought  to  ask  for 
rather  than  for  the  things  we  really  desire 
and  for  the  attainment  of  which  we  are  exert- 
ing every  effort,  is  hypocrisy.  To  ask  for 
specific  blessings  and  then  refrain  from  all 
personal  endeavor,  trusting  that  the  Lord 
will  provide,  is  mockery.  Such  prayers  are 
never  answered.  But  when  we  make  our 
prayer  the  vehicle  for  expressing  our  highest 
aspirations  and  desires,  and  then  add  to  our 
prayer  earnest  and  consecrated  effort,  it 
must  bring  results.  The  answer  may  not 
be  the  one  for  which  we  looked.  Our  prayer 
may  be  answered  in  a  larger  sense  than  we 
had  dreamed.  Moses  prayed  that  he  might 
enter  the  land  of  promise.  Instead  he  was 
given  the  power  to  relinquish  his  work  into 
[94] 


PRAYER 

other  hands  confident  that  in  the  end  God's 
purposes  would  be  fulfilled.  Jesus  prayed 
that  the  cup  might  pass  from  him.  Instead 
he  was  given  the  strength  to  drain  it  to  the 
dregs  and  to  say,  "Thy  will,  not  mine,  be 
done." 

Such  prayer  can  never  pass  away.  In  its 
lowest  and  simplest  form  it  will  always  re- 
main petition,  asking  for  the  things  we  most 
desire  and  yet  knowing  all  the  while  that 
God  will  grant  only  such  blessings  as  are 
most  expedient  for  us.  In  another  and 
higher  form  it  will  become  aspiration  and 
meditation,  the  yearning  for  a  higher  hf e  and 
the  desire  that  we  may  be  given  the  strength 
to  hve  it.  But  in  its  last  and  highest  form 
prayer  will  always  be  communion,  the  blend- 
ing of  the  human  and  the  divine,  the  com- 
plete identification  of  our  wills  with  the  will 
of  God,  the  consciousness  that  we  are  stand- 
ing in  his  presence  and  that  our  souls  are 
"in  tune  with  the  infinite."  Such  prayer  is 
its  own  answer  and  its  own  sufficient  re- 
ward. 

[95] 


WHO  ARE  THE  UNITARIANS? 

"More  things  are  wrought  by  prayer 

Than  this  world  dreams  of;  wherefore  let  thy  voice 

Rise  like  a  fountain  for  me  night  and  day. 

For  what  are  men  better  than  sheep  or  goats 

That  nourish  a  blind  life  within  the  brain 

If,  knowing  God,  they  lift  not  hands  in  prayer?" 


[96] 


God  sent  not  his  Son  into  the  world  to  condemn  the 
world  but  that  the  world  through  him  might  be  saved. 

John  III,  17. 


SALVATION 

A  FEW  years  ago  the  editor  of  the  Hib- 
bert  Journal  sought  to  indicate  the 
probable  effects  of  the  great  war  upon  reli- 
gion. He  stated  that  there  had  always  been 
two  rival  systems  of  theology,  based  upon 
two  diverse  interpretations  of  the  world  and 
of  human  life.  Wherever  the  world  has 
been  regarded  as  evil  and  human  life  un- 
worthy, religion  has  expressed  itself  as  a 
longing  for  salvation,  a  yearning  on  the  part 
of  the  individual  for  redemption  from  the 
world  and  from  self.  Wherever  the  world 
has  been  regarded  as  good  and  human  hfe  a 
boon,  religion  has  expressed  itself  as  an  ef- 
fort after  moral  excellence,  an  attempt  on  the 
part  of  the  individual  to  play  his  part  in  the 
world  and  to  make  some  worth  while  con- 
tribution to  it.  Dr.  Jacks  predicted  that 
which  of  these  two  theories  should  be  more 
popular  after  the  war  would  depend  upon 
how  the  human  mind  should  react  in  the 
[99] 


WHO  ARE  THE  UNITARIANS? 

presence  of  this  world  catastrophe.  If  it 
leads  men  to  despair  of  the  world  and  of  hu- 
man civilization,  then  the  religion  of  salva- 
tion will  receive  an  enormous  impetus.  But 
if  it  strengthens  the  conviction  that  present 
evil  may  result  in  ultimate  good,  that  God 
will  yet  make  the  wrath  of  man  to  praise  him 
while  the  remainder  of  wrath  he  will  restrain, 
then  the  outlook  for  the  religion  of  moral 
excellence  will  be  most  encouraging. 

The  war  is  ended,  and  yet  the  same  uncer- 
tainty prevails  today.  It  is  too  early  to  say 
whether  the  war  has  resulted  in  the  strength- 
ening of  the  claims  of  the  old  theology  or  in 
the  renewal  of  the  demand  for  a  more  liberal 
and  a  more  rational  interpretation  of  reli- 
gion. Unitarians,  however,  continue  to 
identify  themselves  with  the  religion  of  moral 
excellence.  They  still  dare  to  have  faith  in 
a  good  God  and  in  a  good  world  and  in  the 
progress  of  mankind  upward  and  onward 
forever,  and  this  faith  determines  their  at- 
titude toward  the  traditional  doctrine  of  sal- 
vation. It  dictates  their  conception  of  the 
life  from  which  they  wish  to  be  saved  and 
[100] 


SALVATION 

the  life  into  which  they  wish  to  be  delivered. 
The  problem  of  salvation  cannot  be  dis- 
sociated from  that  of  human  sinfulness. 
Nowhere  does  the  old  theology  differ  more 
radically  from  the  new.  In  one,  sin  is  an 
inheritance  from  the  past;  in  the  other  it  is 
an  achievement  of  the  present.  One  bases 
it  upon  the  ancient  doctrine  of  imputed 
righteousness  and  imputed  guilt;  the  other 
upon  the  modern  conception  of  human  free- 
dom and  responsibility.  According  to  one, 
men  are  sinners  because  of  another's  trans- 
gression and  they  can  be  saved  only  by  an- 
other's righteousness ;  according  to  the  other, 
it  is  one's  own  act  which  determines  the  na- 
ture of  his  offense  and  the  measure  of  his 
responsibihty.  And  as  these  two  theories 
differ  in  their  conception  of  sin,  so  also  they 
differ  in  their  interpretation  of  the  nature  of 
punishment.  With  one,  it  involves  endless 
suffering  in  an  eternal  hell,  a  punishment 
which  is  purely  vindictive  in  character;  with 
the  other,  it  involves  the  cumulative  effect  of 
the  penalties  which  every  breach  of  the  moral 
law  brings  in  its  wake,  penalties  which 
[101] 


WHO  ARE  THE  UNITARIANS? 

are  wholly  remedial.  Endless  punishment 
would  defeat  its  own  purpose.  It  would 
make  forever  impossible  the  reclamation  of 
the  sinner.  It  would  signify  that  finite  hu- 
man creatures  could  revolt  against  the  in- 
finite God  and  continue  that  revolt  through- 
out eternity  in  spite  of  the  restraints  of  Al- 
mighty Power  and  the  constraints  of  Al- 
mighty Love.  Thus  the  traditional  hell 
would  be  a  perpetual  monument  to  a  de- 
feated God.  It  would  be  destructive  of  all 
religious  faith.  As  long  as  men  remain  im- 
perfect, they  will  continue  to  sin,  each  sin 
will  bring  its  inevitable  penalty,  and  these 
penalties  will  increase  in  intensity  until, 
through  their  cumulative  effect,  every  hu- 
man soul  is  brought  into  right  relations  with 
God.  It  may  take  a  year  or  it  may  take  a 
millennium,  but  its  goal  is  assured.  A  good 
God  cannot  will  that  any  of  his  children  shall 
perish.  If  he  wills  that  all  shall  have  ever- 
lasting life,  then  he  will  find  some  way  to 
accomplish  his  purpose.  Otherwise  he  is  not 
infinite.  He  is  not  God.  To  those  who  af- 
firm that  such  a  conception  of  sin  and  its 
[102] 


SALVATION 

punishment  cuts  the  nerve  of  all  moral  en- 
deavor, and  that  "if  you  destroy  the  fear  of 
hell  in  the  minds  of  men  you  will  create  a 
hell  on  earth,'"  it  can  be  rejoined  that  just 
in  proportion  as  the  world  has  grown  morally 
better,  belief  in  a  literal  hell  has  declined. 
The  finest  types  of  human  character  are 
found  among  those  who  have  long  since 
abandoned  this  archaic  belief.  It  is  doubt- 
ful if  any  human  being  has  ever  been  kept 
back  from  presumptuous  sin  by  the  picture 
of  a  lurid  hell  at  the  end  of  every  sinner's 
life.  Our  prisons  and  reformatories  are 
filled  with  those  who  have  had  the  advantage 
of  whatever  deterrent  effect  the  traditional 
doctrine  may  have  been  able  to  exert. 

It  is  against  the  background  of  human  sin- 
fulness that  we  must  formulate  our  concep- 
tion of  salvation.  Its  fundamental  meaning 
may  be  determined  by  considering  the  deriv- 
ation of  the  word.  It  comes  from  the  Latin 
"salvus,"  which  means  wholeness,  or  health. 
The  saved  hfe  is  the  whole  life,  the  life  that 
is  characterized  by  moral  sanity  and  spirit- 
ual health.  Because  of  this,  every  saved 
[103] 


WHO  ARE  THE  UNITARIANS? 

man  becomes  a  saviour,  one  who  saves  others. 
If  he  does  not  become  such  a  saviour,  he 
needs  to  beware  lest  he  himself  come  short  of 
salvation. 

"Heaven's  gates  are  shut  to  him  who  comes  alone; 
Save  thou  a  soul,  and  it  shall  save  thine  own." 

Such  a  conception  is  the  polar  opposite  of 
the  traditional  interpretation.  According 
to  that,  there  has  never  been  but  one  saviour. 
To  Jesus,  and  to  him  alone,  this  title  can 
be  applied.  And  the  salvation  which  he 
wrought  was  determined  by  the  traditional 
conception  of  human  needs.  The  first  man 
was  created  not  only  innocent,  but  perfect. 
He  was  placed  in  a  beautiful  garden  and 
provided  with  everything  which  he  might 
need  for  his  enjoyment  or  his  use.  There 
he  might  have  remained  had  he  not  disobeyed 
the  divine  command.  Through  that  primal 
act  of  disobedience  he  not  only  fell  from 
grace,  and  lost  the  consciousness  of  the  di- 
vine approval,  but  he  made  it  possible  for 
sin  and  death  to  enter  the  world  and  become 
a  part  of  the  inheritance  of  the  race.  The 
[104] 


SALVATION 

function  of  Jesus,  according  to  the  tradi- 
tional scheme  of  salvation,  is  to  save  men 
from  this  inherited  guilt.  The  church  has 
sanctioned  many  different  explanations  of 
how  this  salvation  is  to  be  accomplished,  but 
that  Jesus'  death  upon  the  cross  atoned  for 
human  sinfulness  and  made  possible  the 
forgiveness  of  God  is  fundamental  to  them 
all.  For  more  than  twelve  centuries  the 
great  question  among  Christian  people  was 
"What  shall  I  do  to  be  saved?"  And  the 
answer  was  "Submit  yourself  to  the  author- 
ity of  the  church.  It  alone  possesses  the 
kingdom  of  Heaven  and  therefore  it  alone 
can  assure  one  of  salvation."  Thus  the 
world  was  regarded  as  a  doomed  vessel,  the 
church  was  a  sort  of  life  raft  moored  along- 
side, and  the  cry  that  went  up  from  Christian 
leaders  was  ''Sauve  qui  pent/'  The  situa- 
tion was  not  even  relieved  by  the  rule  of 
"Women  and  children  first."  Men  forgot 
their  duty  to  their  fellows  in  their  mad  desire 
to  achieve  safety  for  themselves. 

The  Protestant  reformation  destroyed  the 
Roman  monopoly  of  the  straight  gate  and 
[105] 


WHO  ARE  THE  UNITARIANS? 

the  narrow  way  by  providing  other  gates 
and  other  ways  but  they  were  equally 
straight  and  equally  narrow.  In  place  of 
the  Roman  Catholic  submission  to  ecclesias- 
tical authority  as  the  sole  condition  of  salva- 
tion, it  promulgated  a  variety  of  conditions. 
With  Luther  it  was  justification  by  faith; 
with  Calvin,  election  and  f oreordination ; 
with  Arminius,  the  abounding  grace  of  God. 
And  all  of  these,  CathoHcism,  Lutheranism, 
Calvinism  and  Arminianism,  claimed  to  be 
founded  upon  the  teachings  of  one  whose 
constant  solicitude  was  not  how  he  might 
save  himself  but  how  he  might  serve  others, 
not  how  he  might  get  to  heaven  bye  and  bye, 
but  how  he  could  hasten  the  coming  of  the 
kingdom  of  Heaven  here  and  now.  Can  we 
wonder  that  men  came  to  distrust  this  whole 
scheme  of  salvation  as  an  insult  to  God  and 
an  outrage  upon  humanity?     They  asked, 

"Is   selfishness^ — for  time   a   sin, — 

Stretched  out  unto  eternity,  celestial  prudence?'* 

Only  in  a  self-centred  world,  one  in  which 
everything  is  ordered  with  special  reference 
[106] 


SALVATION 

to  human  needs  and  desires,  could  the  tradi- 
tional view  of  salvation  find  a  congenial  at- 
mosphere. In  a  world  which  is  God-centred 
it  cannot  long  endure.  Unitarians  beheve 
that  instead  of  falling  to  our  present  state 
from  a  higher  level  of  innocence  and  perfec- 
tion, humanity  has  been  slowly  rising 
through  countless  ages  of  evolution  and  de- 
velopment. The  process  is  still  far  from 
complete.  With  the  advance  in  knowledge 
and  the  consequent  quickening  of  our  ethical 
perception,  we  can  no  longer  regard  personal 
salvation  as  the  ultimate  goal  of  human  en- 
deavor. We  are  less  concerned  about  our 
destiny  in  another  world  than  about  our 
duties  in  this.  And  there  is  a  growing  con- 
viction among  all  thinking  people  that  if  we 
will  but  attend  to  the  duties,  God  will  pro- 
vide the  destiny.  If  we  can  make  our  lives 
of  service  to  the  world,  he  will  arrange  for 
their  ultimate  preservation.  For  us  the 
question  is  not  "How  shall  I  be  saved?"  but 
"How  can  I  make  myself  worth  saving?" 
And  the  answer  is,  only  by  a  life  of  love  and 
service. 

[107] 


WHO  ARE  THE  UNITARIANS? 

And  what  is  the  chief  obstacle  to  this  hfe 
of  service?  It  is  our  inherent  selfishness. 
This  is  the  primal  source  of  almost  all  of  the 
sins  of  humanity,  the  spirit  which  leads  us 
to  magnify  self  and  to  seek  our  own  rather 
than  our  neighbor's  good.  It  is  a  spirit 
which  is  as  old  as  humanity.  It  has  given  us 
a  self-centred  universe,  a  self-centred  the- 
ology, and  a  self-centred  interpretation  of 
life  and  duty.  And  it  is  from  this  that  we 
must  seek  salvation.  Not  from  the  penal- 
ties for  our  sins,  for  these  are  remedial  in 
nature  and  salutary  in  effect,  but  from  sin 
itself  and  its  root-source,  selfishness.  And 
it  is  for  this  that  we  look  to  Jesus.  He  has 
pointed  out  the  way  of  escape.  "''iVhosoever 
would  save  his  life,  shall  lose  it;  but  whoso- 
ever would  lose  his  life  for  my  sake,  -shall 
find  it.'*  The  effort  after  personal  salva- 
tion defeats  itself.  It  is  inherently  selfish 
and  selfishness  can  never  be  the  centre  of  the 
religious  life.  As  'Whittier  has  said :  "Hope 
not  the  cure  of  sin  till  self  is  dead."  It  is 
only  by  renouncing  the  life  of  self  that  the 
higher  life  is  found.  It  is  only  by  "forget- 
[108] 


SALVATION 

ting  it  in  love's  service."  The  great  war 
taught  us  that  there  are  ideal  values  for 
which  men  will  sacrifice  their  comfort  and 
ease  and  even  life  itself.  To  save  one's  life 
from  all  hardship  and  discomfort  and  priva- 
tion is  to  lose  everything  that  makes  it  worth 
living;  while  to  lose  one's  life  in  the  service 
of  some  great  and  worthy  cause  is  to  find  it 
again  in  ever  greater  abundance. 

Thus  we  continue  to  look  to  Jesus  as  a 
world-saviour.  He  saves  men,  not  by  his 
death,  but  by  his  life.  When  asked  that  the 
chief  places  in  the  kingdom  might  be  re- 
served for  two  of  his  disciples,  he  replied 
that  it  was  not  in  his  power  to  gi^ant  such  a 
request.  These  places  were  for  those  for 
whom  they  had  been  prepared  from  the  foun- 
dation of  the  world,  those  who  had  demon- 
strated their  fitness  for  them  by  long  and 
faithful  service.  There  was  to  be  no  spoils 
system,  no  favoritism,  in  the  kingdom  of 
God.  This  lesson  was  not  lost  upon  the  dis- 
ciples. With  them,  also,  service,  good 
works,  brotherly  love.  Christian  kindness, 
became  the  characteristics  of  the  followers 
[109] 


WHO  ARE  THE  UNITARIANS? 

of  Jesus.  The  New  Testament  knows 
nothing  of  any  faith  which  is  not  born  of 
love  and  attested  by  good  works.  When 
Paul's  disciples  sought  to  pervert  his  teach- 
ings and  asserted  that  one  could  be  saved  by 
faith  independent  of  good  works,  St.  James 
rebuked  them  with  this  challenge:  "Show 
me  thy  faith  apart  from  thy  works  and  I,  by 
my  works,  will  show  thee  my  faith."  For 
"faith  without  works  is  dead."  A  saving 
faith  is  not  the  acceptance  of  a  body  of  opin- 
ions about  God  and  Christ  and  their  relations 
to  one  another  and  to  the  world;  it  is  an  at- 
titude of  confidence  and  love  and  trust 
toward  God  as  the  great  all-father  and 
toward  Jesus  as  the  supreme  revealer  of  that 
God  to  men.  To  those  who  share  this  faith 
religion  is  no  longer  a  means  of  personal 
salvation;  it  is  a  means  of  social  service. 
The  church  is  no  longer  an  ark  of  safety; 
it  is  an  institution  through  which  we  seek  to 
organize  the  life  of  God  as  it  manifests  it- 
self in  the  souls  of  men  and  to  enlist  it  in 
the  service  of  the  world.  Under  such  condi- 
tions the  desire  for  salvation  becomes  at  once 
[110] 


SALVATION 

honest  and  honorable.  The  means  may  be 
personal,  but  the  motive  and  the  end  are 
both  alike  social.  It  is  deliverance  from  the 
sin  of  selfishness  and  from  all  that  would 
deaden  the  conscience  or  pervert  the  will. 
Such  deliverance  is  not  achieved  through 
faith  but  through  character.  It  is  not  pur- 
chased for  us  by  another's  death;  it  is  some- 
thing which  we  must  work  out  for  ourselves, 
always  with  fear  and  trembling  lest  we  prove 
insufficient  for  the  task,  and  yet  always  with 
the  assurance  that  in  every  effort  to  make 
our  lives  of  service  to  the  world,  it  is  God 
who  works  in  us  both  to  will  and  to  do  his 
good  pleasure. 


[Ill] 


Eye  hath  not  seen,  nor  ear  heard,  neither  have 
entered  into  the  heart  of  man  the  things  which  God 
hath  prepared  for  them  that  love  him. 

1  Corinthians  II,  9. 


THE  FUTURE  LIFE 

ONE  of  the  most  absorbing  questions 
which  have  baffled  and  perplexed  the 
human  mind  throughout  the  ages  has  been 
as  to  the  nature  of  that  life  eternal  which 
has  been  the  substance  of  the  hopes  and 
dreams  of  devout  men  and  women.  What 
is  the  secret  of  the  life  immortal?  How 
shall  we  solve  the  mystery  which  awaits  us 
there  beyond  death?  Unfortunately,  some 
of  our  most  cherished  beliefs  are  incapable 
of  either  proof  or  disproof.  We  are  obliged 
to  content  ourselves  with  a  reasonable  prob- 
ability. Such  is  our  faith  in  a  future  life. 
As  Tennyson  has  said: 

"Thou  canst  not  prove  that  thou  art  immortal,  no, 
Nor  yet  that  thou  art  mortal — 
For  nothing  worth  proving  can  be  proven, 
Nor  yet  disproven." 

The    Unitarian    belief    in    immortality    isi 

simply  the  inevitable  corollary  of  their  con- 

[115] 


WHO  ARE  THE  UNITARIANS? 

ception  of  life  itself.  If  life  is  eternally  pro- 
gressive, progress  upwards  and  onwards 
forever,  then  death  must  be  but  an  incident 
in  that  endlessly  progressive  life. 

There  are  two  things  which  are  impressed 
upon  us  whenever  we  attempt  to  solve  the 
mystery  which  lies  beyond  the  grave.  One 
is  the  recognition  of  the  insuperable  obstacles 
by  which  every  such  attempt  is  beset.  For 
centuries  men  have  sought  to  peer  within  the 
veil.  And  with  what  result?  The  scenes 
and  events  of  the  life  immortal  remain 
shrouded  in  impenetrable  mystery.  No-one 
has  yet  returned  from  that  mysterious  realm 
to  gratify  our  curiosity.  Communications 
which  purport  to  come  from  the  friends  that 
have  gone  before,  although  vouched  for  by 
Sir  Oliver  Lodge  and  others,  are  couched  in 
the  language  of  today  and  tell  us  little  that 
is  not  already  present  in  our  own  or  another's 
consciousness.  It  cannot  be  affirmed  that 
such  communications  are  impossible.  No 
human  being  is  sufficiently  well  informed  to 
make  such  an  assertion.  What  we  can  say 
is  that  thus  far  these  alleged  communications 
[116] 


THE  FUTURE  LIFE 

have  been  singularly  disappointing.  May  it 
not  be  that  there  is  infinite  wisdom  underly- 
ing this  apparent  inscrutabiUty  of  the  be- 
yond? May  it  not  be  a  beneficent  uncer- 
tainty? If  it  were  possible  to  make  voyages 
of  discovery  into  that  other  world  and  to 
chart  its  mysteries,  could  we  bear  to  do  any- 
thing else?  If  we  knew  that  we  could  enter 
into  communication  with  the  friends  who 
have  gone  before,  should  we  not  be  forever 
besieging  the  portals  of  that  other  world  for 
such  communications?  And  would  this  not 
lead  to  the  utter  abandonment  of  the  inter- 
ests and  activities  of  the  life  that  now 
is?  One  cannot  escape  the  conviction  that 
if  God  had  intended  that  we  should  know 
the  details  of  that  hfe  he  would  have  made 
it  easier  for  them  to  be  ascertained.  If  he 
has  not  made  it  easier  for  us,  may  it  not  be 
because  he  does  not  wish  to  have  the  inter- 
ests of  this  life  overshadowed  by  the  dis- 
tractions of  the  next?  We  must  live  our 
lives  "One  world  at  a  time."  "Otherwise," 
as  Kant  has  said,  "God  and  eternity,  with 
their  infinite  majesty,  would  stand  cease- 
[117] 


WHO  ARE  THE  UNITARIANS? 

lessly  before  our  eyes."  We  could  think  of 
nothing  else.  It  may  be  that  the  benefi- 
cence of  this  present  life  is  attested  by  what 
is  denied  quite  as  much  as  by  what  is  given. 
A  second  impression  made  upon  us  by  the 
attempts  to  fathom  the  secrets  of  that  other 
life  is  that  the  reality  must  surpass  anything 
that  the  mind  can  formulate  or  the  imagina- 
tion conceive.  In  the  words  of  Isaiah,  which 
have  their  echo  in  St.  Paul,  "Since  the  begin- 
ning of  the  world,  men  have  not  heard,  nor 
perceived  by  the  ear,  neither  hath  the  eye 
seen, — what  God  hath  prepared  for  him  that 
waiteth  upon  him."  How  pathetic  have 
been  the  attempts  of  devout  men  to  behold 
the  invisible  and  to  portray  the  indescribable. 
The  Indian  with  his  happy  hunting  ground, 
the  Goth  with  his  Valhalla  of  feasting  and 
fighting,  the  Oriental  with  his  dream  of  an- 
nihilation or  absorption  and  the  Christian 
with  his  vision  of  a  city  with  walls  of  jasper, 
gates  of  pearl  and  streets  of  gold,  all  attest 
the  inabihty  of  the  human  imagination  to 
grasp  the  reality  of  that  other  life.  We  look 
up  from  these  various  pictures,  with  their 
[118] 


THE  FUTURE  LIFE 

material  crudity  and  spiritual  poverty,  with 
the  conviction  that  that  life  must  be  infinitely 
grander  than  this  or  God's  work  has  resulted 
in  an  anti-climax.  In  the  words  of  Sir 
Oliver  Lodge:  "I  will  not  believe  that  it  is 
given  to  man  to  have  thoughts  nobler  or 
loftier  than  the  real  truth  of  things." 

Let  us  turn  from  the  vision  to  the  reality. 
If,  as  we  believe,  all  worlds  are  God's  worlds 
and  all  hfe  is  one,  then  we  must  be  already 
living  the  eternal  life.  As  Dr.  Fosdick  has 
said,  "If  man  is  immortal  at  all,  he  is  immor- 
tal now."  Eternal  life  is  not  a  possession 
conferred  at  death;  it  is  a  present  endow- 
ment. This  is  the  conviction  which  is  grad- 
ually taking  possession  of  the  minds  of 
thinking  people.  They  are  giving  less 
thought  to  what  is  to  become  of  them  after 
death  and  more  to  what  is  happening  to 
them  here  and  now.  What  kind  of  a  life 
are  we  actually  living  today?  What  sort  of 
characters  are  we  forming  in  the  midst  of  our 
daily  activities?  Are  we  living  so  as  to 
make  it  worth  while  for  God  to  permit  us  to 
live  forever?  If  so,  can  we  doubt  that  he 
[119] 


WHO  ARE  THE  UNITARIANS? 

will  make  it  possible  for  us  to  live  forever? 
These  are  the  questions  which  men  are  pon- 
dering even  though  they  may  shrink  from 
giving  expression  to  their  hopes  and  fears. 
What  they  are  not  always  conscious  of  is 
that  this  comes  nearer  to  the  thought  of  Jesus 
than  much  that  has  passed  as  the  teaching  of 
the  church.  When  the  young  man  came  to 
him  and  asked,  "What  good  thing  shall  I 
do  that  I  may  have  eternal  life?"  he  was  not 
contemplating  impending  death.  He  was 
never  more  alive.  And  when  Jesus  an- 
swered, "If  thou  wouldst  enter  into  life,  keep 
the  commandments,"  he  also  was  thinking 
of  life,  not  death.  To  him,  entering  upon 
life  was  synonymous  with  life  eternal.  It 
was  something  that  could  be  experienced 
here  and  now,  not  something  for  which  we 
must  wait  until  we  have  shuffled  off  this  mor- 
tal coil.  According  to  Jesus,  until  one  be- 
comes conscious  of  the  eternal  character  of 
this  present  life,  he  has  not  begun  to  live. 
"He  that  heareth  my  word  and  believeth  on 
him  that  sent  me  hath  (already)  everlasting 
life."  Only  through  this  faith  in  the  end- 
[120] 


THE  FUTURE  LIFE 

less  character  of  the  life  we  are  now  living 
can  we  claim  the  victory  over  death  and  the 
grave. 

Such  a  faith  is  a  matter  of  conviction 
rather  than  of  proof.  It  is  the  result  of  ac- 
tual experience  rather  than  of  logical  deduc- 
tion. One  might  prove  that  life  survives 
death  without  proving  that  it  is  eternal.  It 
might  survive  for  a  time  and  then  fade  away. 
One  might  prove  that  the  human  soul  is  in- 
destructible without  proving  that  the  con- 
sciousness of  personal  identity  will  be  pre- 
served. The  soul  may  be  reabsorbed  into 
the  source  whence  it  came.  One  might 
prove  that  Jesus  arose  from  the  dead  and 
ascended  bodily  into  heaven  without  prov- 
ing that  a  similar  destiny  awaits  mankind. 
Such  an  experience  would  mark  him  as  a 
unique  personality,  and  as  such  he  would 
naturally  experience  a  unique  destiny.  But 
one  cannot  demonstrate  the  real  quality  of 
the  life  that  we  are  living  without  proving 
its  eternal  character.  The  disciples  be- 
came conscious  of  the  power  of  the  endless 
life  in  Jesus  and  they  refused  to  believe  that 
[121] 


WHO  ARE  THE  UNITARIANS? 

death  could  have  dominion  over  him.  It  is 
the  consciousness  of  this  same  deathless 
qualitjT-  in  the  lives  of  those  we  know  best  and 
love  most  which  assures  us  that,  for  them 
also,  death  cannot  be  the  end.  But  if  for 
them,  why  not  for  all?     For  death 

"Can  only  take  away  the  mortal  breath; 

And  life,  commencing  here, 

Is  but  the  prelude  to  its  full  career." 

If  we  would  assure  ourselves  of  the  power 
of  this  faith,  we  must  observe  its  effects  upon 
the  lives  of  those  who  have  cherished  it. 
Their  name  is  legion,  for  it  has  been  the  in- 
spiration of  the  saints  and  martj^rs  of  every 
age  and  race.  Nowhere  do  we  find  it  more 
clearly  exhibited  than  in  the  life  of  the  great 
apostle.  Although  he  was  not  one  of  the 
original  disciples  and  had  been  deprived  of 
the  privilege  of  walking  with  Jesus  and  talk- 
ing with  him  during  his  brief  ministry,  he 
came  nearer  to  his  thought  than  any  of 
the  chosen  twelve.  Furthermore  his  letters 
were  written  prior  to  the  earliest  of  the  gos- 
pel narratives  and  therefore  before  the  myths 
[122] 


THE  FUTURE  LIFE 

and  legends  which  came  to  be  associated  with 
Jesus  had  gained  wide  acceptance.  He 
knew  nothing  of  the  virgin  birth  and  the 
bodily  resurrection,  and  yet  for  him  Jesus 
was  not  dead,  but  alive  forevermore.  There 
is  no  New  Testament  writer  whose  testimony 
is  given  more  emphatically  or  more  consist- 
ently in  favor  of  this  power  of  the  endless 
Hfe. 

The  first  effect  of  this  faith  was  to  make 
St.  Paul  utterly  indifferent  to  all  earthly 
vicissitudes.  As  long  as  he  could  carry  on 
the  work  to  which  he  had  dedicated  himself, 
he  cared  nothing  about  the  persecution  and 
suffering  to  which  he  was  subjected.  They 
were  evidence  that  he  had  been  permitted 
to  share  the  tribulations  of  the  Master  and 
might  expect,  therefore,  to  share  his  glory. 
He  might  suffer,  but  he  must  not  sin.  He 
might  be  beaten  and  imprisoned  and  endure 
all  manner  of  evil,  but  he  must  not  renounce 
the  cause  of  Christ  and  so  crucify  him  afresh. 
For,  as  he  wrote  to  the  Roman  church,  "The 
wages  of  sin  is  death,  but  the  gift  of  God  is 
eternal  life." 

[123] 


WHO  ARE  THE  UNITARIANS? 

A  second  effect  of  this  same  faith  was 
Paul's  contempt  for  death  and  all  its  attend- 
ant evils.  Writing  to  his  friends  in  the 
Philippian  church  he  states  that  it  matters 
not  to  him  whether  he  live  or  die,  if  so  be 
Christ  is  magnified  in  his  body,  "for  to  live 
is  Christ,  to  die  is  gain."  To  the  Corinthians 
he  writes:  "For  we  are  confident,  willing 
rather  to  be  absent  from  the  body  and  to  be 
present  with  the  Lord."  At  times  his  atti- 
tude is  that  of  mingled  challenge  and  exulta- 
tion as  in  the  familiar  cry,  "O  death,  where 
is  thy  sting;  O  grave,  where  is  thy  victory?" 
Everywhere  there  is  the  same  sublime  disre- 
gard, fearing  neither  death  nor  life,  nor 
things  present  nor  things  to  come,  if  only  he 
remained  obedient  to  the  heavenly  vision. 

This  faith,  while  conspicuous  in  the  great 
apostle,  was  not  peculiar  to  him.  It  has  mani- 
fested its  power  in  all  ages.  We  witness  the 
same  heroic  spirit  asserting  itself  again  and 
again  during  those  terrible  days  when  the 
church  was  prostrate  under  the  heel  of  a 
Domitian  or  a  Nero.  There  is  something  to 
be  reckoned  with  in  a  faith  which  takes  rich 
[124] 


THE  FUTURE  LIFE 

and  poor,  master  and  slave,  patrician  and 
peasant,  and  transforms  all  alike  into  heroes 
and  martyrs.  They  might  renounce  their 
property  but  they  would  not  renounce  their 
religion.  They  might  be  deprived  of  their 
liberty  but  they  could  not  be  deprived  of 
their  faith.  They  v^ent  into  the  arena  with 
hymns  of  praise  upon  their  lips.  They  were 
torn  by  wild  beasts  and  mangled  by  scarcely 
less  brutal  gladiators,  and  yet  they  retained 
their  faith  that  their  affliction,  which  endured 
but  for  a  moment,  would  work  for  them  a  far 
more  exceeding  and  eternal  weight  of  glory. 
Persecution  might  destroy  the  body ;  it  could 
not  destroy  the  soul.  And  when,  at  last, 
they  should  be  absent  from  the  body,  they 
would  be  at  home  with  their  Lord. 

If,  at  times,  this  faith  seems  wholly  absent 
from  the  world  of  today,  it  is  not  because  it 
has  lost  its  power  but  because  men  have  lost 
their  grip  upon  it  or  abandoned  it  altogether. 
Those  who  heed  the  apostolic  injunction  and 
lay  hold  upon  life  eternal  find  that  it  has 
lost  none  of  its  old-time  efficacy.  Make  it 
a  this  world  reality,  not  a  next  world  expec- 
[125] 


WHO  ARE  THE  UNITARIANS? 

tation,  and  all  fear  of  death  will  be  swallowed 
up  in  the  consciousness  of  life.  Such  a  faith 
does  not  bid  us  court  death,  but  live  each  day 
as  though  we  knew  that  we  were  to  live  for- 
ever. It  does  not  bid  us  renounce  our 
worldly  possessions,  but  use  them  as  means 
to  the  attainment  of  a  higher  life.  It  does 
not  bid  us  go  into  the  arena  and  fight  with 
beasts  in  order  to  prove  our  faith,  but  it  bids 
us  take  our  stand  as  immortal  souls  in  the 
midst  of  the  arena  of  life  and  to  wage  an 
eternal  warfare  against  everything  that 
would  drag  us  down  to  the  brute  level. 
Without  this  faith,  we  might  regard  this 
earthly  life  as  a  sort  of  pleasure  trip,  pro- 
longed for  twenty  or  forty  or  seventy  years, 
after  which  we  go  hence  to  be  no  more. 
Under  such  conditions  it  would  be  the  part  of 
wisdom  to  crowd  it  with  creature  comforts 
and  bodily  satisfactions.  We  should  eat, 
drink  and  be  merry,  for  tomorrow  we  die. 
But  sustained  and  strengthened  by  this  faith, 
believing  that  we  are  not  pilgrims  or  stran- 
gers but  children  of  the  household  of  God,  life 
becomes  real  and  earnest  and  the  grave  is  no 
[126] 


THE  FUTURE  LIFE 

longer  the  goal.  We  experience  a  complete 
trans  valuation  of  values.  We  realize  that 
wealth  and  power  are  temporal;  they  will  be 
left  behind.  Character  is  eternal;  it  alone 
endures.  Creature  comforts  are  fleeting 
and  transitory;  they  will  pass  away.  The 
things  of  the  spirit  are  permanent ;  they  can 
never  fade.  Even  death  itself  is  temporal. 
It  is  simply  a  door,  opening  into  another  and 
larger  room  in  the  father's  house,  and  life 
becomes  richer  and  more  beautiful  as  we 
journey  through  the  many  mansions  which 
he  hath  prepared  for  those  that  love  him. 
This  has  been  well  called  "practicing  im- 
mortalitj^"  Those  who  have  learned  to  live 
their  lives  amid  the  seen  and  the  temporal 
in  the  spirit  of  one  whose  soul  has  been 
touched  by  the  unseen  and  the  eternal,  find 
that  this  faith  has  lost  none  of  its  power. 
It  is  capable  of  transforming  the  lives  of 
men  today  just  as  it  transformed  the  hves 
of  Jesus  and  Paul  and  the  holy  men  of  old. 
Working  day  by  day  in  the  light  of  an  end- 
less life,  we  become  builders  for  eternity. 
The  apparent  loss  of  spiritual  energ\%  the 
[127] 


WHO  ARE  THE  UNITARIANS? 

seeming  discrepancy  between  the  world's  ef- 
fort and  its  actual  achievement,  the  manifest 
disparity  between  virtue  and  happiness,  or 
wickedness  and  misery,  the  blasted  hopes, 
the  disappointed  ambitions,  the  shattered  af- 
fections, all  of  which  are  so  apparent  when- 
ever we  attempt  to  view  this  life  as  an  end  in 
itself,  disappear  at  once  when  we  learn  to 
view  it  as  part  of  a  larger  whole.  In  that 
larger  life  the  lost  spiritual  power  is  re- 
gained, the  world  processes  come  to  an  ade- 
quate fruition,  the  justice  of  the  world  is 
vindicated  and  the  broken  arcs  of  our  little 
lives  come  to  their  perfect  round.  As 
Browning  says : 

"All  we  have  willed  or  hoped  or  dreamed  of  good 

shall  existj 
Not  its  semblance,  but  itself — 
When   eternity   affirms    the   conception   of   an   hour." 

It  requires  no  argument  to  prove  that  a 
life  lived  in  this  way,  "under  the  aspect  of 
eternity,"  cannot  fail  to  give  satisfaction. 
In  the  words  of  Aristotle:  "Live  as  nearly 
as  you  can  the  immortal  life  and  it  will  prove 
[128] 


THE  FUTURE  LIFE 

itself.  Live  the  kind  of  life  you  ought  to 
live  if  you  are  to  live  forever  and  all  your 
doubts  will  disappear."  Live  it  for  a  single 
day  and  it  will  be  abundantly  worth  while. 
Live  it  for  any  number  of  days  and  it  will 
bring  with  it  a  strength  of  character,  a  moral 
courage,  a  spiritual  peace  which  the  world 
can  neither  give  nor  take  away. 


[129] 


CONCLUSION 
ARE  UNITARIANS  EVANGELICAL? 

THE  question  with  which  we  began — 
Who  are  the  Unitarians? — is  now  an- 
swered. We  have  considered  their  origin, 
their  history  and  their  behefs.  It  has  been 
demonstrated  that  a  creedless  church  is  not 
necessarily  a  faithless  church.  It  could  be 
demonstrated  just  as  easily  that  this  free 
faith  has  ever  articulated  itself  in  terms  of 
upright  life  and  noble  character.  Call  the 
roll  of  the  good  and  the  great  among  the  men 
and  women  of  America  and  one  will  be  sur- 
prised to  find  how  many  of  them  have  be- 
longed to  the  Unitarian  church.  A  church 
which  has  numbered  among  its  adherents 
William  Ellery  Channing,  Theodore  Parker, 
Ralph  Waldo  Emerson,  and  Edward  Everett 
Hale,  and  which  still  counts  among  its  most 
devoted  members  Charles  W.  Eliot  and 
William  Howard  Taft  cannot  be  ignored. 
Its  constituency  must  be  weighed  rather  than 
counted.  We  can  say  without  boasting,  for 
[130] 


CONCLUSION 

it  is  admitted  by  those  who  love  us  least, 
that  nowhere  in  any  community  can  one  find 
a  group  of  men  and  women  more  renowned 
for  breadth  of  mind,  strength  of  will  and  in- 
tegrity of  character,  than  those  who  have  as- 
sociated themselves  together  for  the  purpose 
of  organizing  a  Unitarian  church. 

For  more  than  a  century  it  has  been  the 
privilege  of  these  churches  to  mediate  be- 
tween an  unintelligent  faith  and  an  irrelig- 
ious culture.  They  have  demonstrated  that 
men  can  be  religious  without  being  supersti- 
tious and  hberal  without  being  irreverent. 
This  has  been  a  task  for  strong  men,  for 
self-reliant  men,  for  men  who  have  dared  to 
do  their  own  thinking  and  to  abide  by  the 
consequences  of  their  own  thought.  This 
may  explain,  even  if  it  does  not  justify,  what 
is  often  an  occasion  for  concern  among  lib- 
eral Christians, — the  relatively  small  number 
of  liberal  churches.  It  is  lamented  that  it  is 
not  a  popular  faith,  that  it  does  not  appeal 
to  the  multitudes.  Since  when  has  truth 
been  determined  by  majorities  or  the  right 
b)^  popular  vote?  Ours  is  a  pioneer  move- 
[131] 


WHO  ARE  THE  UNITARIANS? 

ment.  Our  mission  has  been  to  blaze  the 
trail  over  which  others  now  walk  in  perfect 
security.  When  we  become  popular  we 
shall  have  ceased  to  be  pioneers. 

Scarcely  less  common  among  the  miscon- 
ceptions of  Unitarianism  is  the  statement 
that  it  is  an  easy  faith.  On  the  contrary  it 
is  the  hardest  of  the  hard.  It  dares  to  dis- 
pense with  the  helps  upon  which  other 
churches  place  so  much  rehance.  It  is 
harder  to  think  for  oneself  than  to  have  one's 
thinking  done  by  pope  or  presbyter  or  priest. 
It  is  harder  to  formulate  one's  own  belief 
than  to  accept  a  creed  formulated  by  synod 
or  council  or  church.  It  is  harder  to  deter- 
mine for  oneself  what  is  right  and  then  to  do 
it  at  whatever  cost  than  to  conform  to  some 
external  standard  of  conduct.  And  it  is  a 
thousandfold  harder  to  face  the  inevitable 
and  unescapable  penalties  for  wrong-doing 
than  to  have  those  penalties  remitted  through 
faith  in  the  atoning  death  of  an  innocent  man. 
It  is  this  reliance  of  the  individual  upon  him- 
self, upon  his  own  reason  and  conscience  and 
will,  that  makes  the  Unitarian  faith  so  diffi- 
[132] 


CONCLUSION 

cult  to  accept  and  to  live  up  to,  and  yet  it  is 
this  self-reliance  which  makes  it  abundantly 
worth  while. 

But  is  such  a  faith  evangelical?  This  is 
the  question  asked  by  those  who  are  respon- 
sible for  the  policy  of  exclusion  in  religion 
and  answered  in  the  negative.  Our  answer 
will  depend  upon  what  we  mean  by  evangel- 
ical. It  may  mean  a  message  which  is  Hter- 
ally  "good  news,"  or  one  which  is  in  accord 
with  the  teachings  of  Jesus  as  contained  in 
the  gospel  narratives. 

We  know  how  the  traditional  scheme  of 
salvation,  with  its  wretched  story  of  sin  and 
failure  and  defeat,  fares  when  subjected  to 
this  twofold  test.  Is  it  good  news?  Can 
one  who  hears  the  story  for  the  first  time  ac- 
cept it  as  glad  tidings  of  great  joy?  Is  it 
not  rather  a  gospel  of  despair?  Again,  is 
it  in  accord  with  the  teachings  of  Jesus? 
On  the  contrary  it  is  in  direct  opposition  to 
those  teachings.  If  Jesus  were  here  today 
and  were  to  be  judged  by  his  teachings  as 
recorded  in  the  four  gospels,  he  would  not  be 
eligible  to  sit  in  the  councils  of  the  so-called 
evangelical  churches. 

[133] 


WHO  ARE  THE  UNITARIANS? 

How  is  it  with  the  Unitarian  message  as 
outhned  in  these  pages, — God  our  Father, 
man  our  brother,  Jesus  our  moral  and  spirit- 
ual leader,  human  life  a  progress  in  that 
Christlikeness  of  character  which  is  salvation, 
and  human  destiny  that  same  progress  con- 
tinued upward  and  onward  forever?  If  we 
take  the  word  literally,  it  is  certainly  evan- 
gehcal,  for  it  has  brought  glad  tidings  of 
great  joy  to  men  in  all  ages  and  the  world 
over.  If  we  take  the  derived  meaning  as 
implying  conformity  to  the  teachings  of 
Jesus,  it  is  also  evangelical,  for  it  is  more 
than  conformity;  it  is  practical  identity.  It 
is  a  fair  question  whether  the  Unitarian 
church,  ( and  its  sister  church,  the  Universal- 
ist)  is  not  the  only  church  which  has  a  right 
to  call  itself  evangelical;  for  it  is  the  only 
church  which  has  dared  to  preserve  in  all  its 
simple  beauty  the  evangel  which  Jesus  pro- 
claimed in  far-off  Galilee, — the  good  tidings 
of  the  coming  of  the  kingdom  of  God,  and 
of  man's  fitness  for  citizenship  therein.  We 
are  not  ashamed  of  this  gospel  of  Christ,  and 
by  our  fidelity  to  it  we  are  willing  to  be 
judged. 

[134] 


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